Sophocles ( in English; ancient Greek Sophoklēs, probably ; c. 496 BC-406 BC) was the second of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus and earlier than those of Euripides. According to the Suda, a 10th century encyclopedia, Sophocles wrote 123 plays during the course of his life, but only seven have survived in a complete form: Ajax, Antigone, Trachinian Women, Oedipus the King, Electra, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus. For almost 50 years, Sophocles was the most-awarded playwright in the dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens
that took place during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and the Dionysia. Sophocles competed in around 30 competitions; he won perhaps 24 and never received lower than second place; in comparison, Aeschylus won 14 competitions and was defeated by Sophocles at times, while Euripides won only 4 competitions.
The most famous of Sophocles' tragedies are those concerning
Oedipus and
Antigone: these are often known as the
Theban plays, although
each play was actually a part of different
tetralogy, the other members of which are now
lost. Sophocles influenced the development of the drama, most
importantly by adding a third actor and thereby reducing the
importance of the
chorus in the
presentation of the
plot. He also
developed his
characters to a
greater extent than earlier playwrights such as Aeschylus.
Life
A marble relief of a poet, perhaps
Sophocles.
Sophocles,
the son of Sophillus, was a wealthy member of the rural
deme (small community) of Colonus Hippius
in Attica
, which would
later become a setting for his plays, and was probably born
there. His birth took place a few years before the
Battle of
Marathon
in 490 BC: the exact year is unclear, although
497/6 is perhaps most likely. Sophocles' first artistic
triumph was in 468 BC when he took first prize in the
Dionysia theatre competition over the reigning
master of Athenian drama,
Aeschylus.
According to
Plutarch the victory came
under unusual circumstances. Instead of following the custom of
choosing judges by lot, the archon asked
Cimon
and the other
strategoi present
to decide the victor of the contest. Plutarch further contends that
Aeschylus soon left for Sicily following this loss to Sophocles.
Although Plutarch says that this was Sophocles' first production,
it is now thought that this is an embellishment of the truth and
that his first production was most likely in 470 BC.
Triptolemus was probably one of the plays that Sophocles
presented at this festival.
Sophocles became a man of importance in the public halls of Athens
as well as in the theatres. Sophocles was chosen to lead the paean,
a choral chant to a god, at the age of 16 celebrating the decisive
Greek sea victory over the Persians at the Battle of Salamis. This
rather insufficient information about Sophocles’ civic life implies
he was a well-liked man who participated in activities in society
and showed remarkable artistic ability. He was also elected as one
of ten strategoi, high executive officials that commanded the armed
forces, as a junior colleague of Pericles. Sophocles was born
extremely wealthy (his father was a wealthy armour manufacturer)
and was highly educated throughout his entire life. Early in his
career, the politician
Cimon might have been
one of his patrons, although if he was there was no ill will borne
by
Pericles, Cimon's rival, when Cimon was
ostracized in 461 BC. In 443/2 he served as one of the
Hellenotamiai, or treasurers of Athena,
helping to manage the finances of the city during the political
ascendancy of Pericles.
According to the Vita Sophoclis he
served as a general in the Athenian campaign against Samos
, which had
revolted in 441 BC; he was supposed to have been elected to his
post as the result of his production of
Antigone.
In 420 he welcomed and set up an altar for the icon of
Asclepius at his house, when the deity was
introduced in Athens. For this he was given the posthumous epithet
Dexion (receiver) by the Athenians. He was also elected,
in 413 BC, to be one of the commissioners crafting a response to
the catastrophic destruction of the Athenian expeditionary force in
Sicily during the
Peloponnesian War.
Sophocles died at the venerable age of ninety in 406 or 405 BC,
having seen within his lifetime both the Greek triumph in the
Persian Wars and the terrible
bloodletting of the Peloponnesian War. As with many famous men in
classical antiquity, Sophocles' death inspired a number of
apocryphal stories about the cause. Perhaps the most famous is the
suggestion that he died from the strain of trying to recite a long
sentence from his
Antigone without pausing to take a
breath; another account suggests he choked while eating grapes at
the
Anthesteria festival in Athens. A
third account holds that he died of happiness after winning his
final victory at the City Dionysia. A few months later, the comic
poet wrote this eulogy in his play titled
The Muses:
"Blessed is Sophocles, who had a long life, was a man both happy
and talented, and the writer of many good tragedies; and he ended
his life well without suffering any misfortune." This is somewhat
ironic, for according to some accounts his own sons tried to have
him declared incompetent near the end of his life; he is said to
have refuted their charge in court by reading from his as yet
unproduced
Oedipus at Colonus. Both Iophon, one of his
sons, and a grandson, also called Sophocles, followed in his
footsteps to become playwrights themselves.
Sophocles as erastês
It was common in fifth-century Greece for men of the upper classes
to cultivate sexual relationships with adolescent boys. Sophocles
was one such participant in the relationship between the
erastês ("lover") and
eromenos ("beloved").
Athenaeus reports two stories of this
kind, one, if authentic, from a contemporary: a
symposium in which Sophocles cleverly steals a
kiss from the boy sitting next to him, and another in which
Sophocles entices a young boy to have sex outside the walls of
Athens, and the boy takes Sophocles' cloak. According to
Plutarch, when he caught Sophocles admiring a young
boy's looks, Pericles rebuked him for neglecting his duty as a
strategos. Sophocles' sexual appetite reportedly lasted
well into old age. In
The
Republic (1.329b-329c) Plato tells us that when he finally
succumbed to impotence, Sophocles was glad to be free of his
"raging and savage beast of a master." it is debatable how far such
anecdotes were invented as references to this well-known
passage.
In yet another such account, a satirical one by
Machon involving a
hetaira
known for her ironical sense of humor, we are told that, "Demophon,
Sophocles' minion, when still a youth had Nico, already old and
surnamed the she-goat; they say she had very fine buttocks. One day
he begged of her to lend them to him. 'Very well,' she said with a
smile,—'Take from me, dear, what you give to Sophocles.'"
Works and legacy
Among Sophocles' earliest innovations was the addition of a third
actor, which further reduced the role of the
chorus and created greater opportunity for
character development and conflict between characters.
Aeschylus, who dominated Athenian
playwrighting during Sophocles' early career, followed suit and
adopted the third character into his own work towards the end of
his life. Aristotle credits Sophocles with the introduction
of
skenographia, or scenery-painting. It was not until
after the death of the old master Aeschylus in 456 BC that
Sophocles became the pre-eminent playwright in Athens.
Thereafter, Sophocles emerged victorious in dramatic competitions
at 18
Dionysia and 6
Lenaia festivals. In addition to innovations in
dramatic structure, Sophocles'
work is also known for its deeper development of characters than
earlier playwrights. His reputation was such that foreign rulers
invited him to attend their courts, although unlike Aeschylus who
died in
Sicily, or Euripides who spent time
in
Macedon, Sophocles never accepted any of
these invitations.
Aristotle used
Sophocles's
Oedipus the
King in his
Poetics (c. 335 BC) as an example
of the highest achievement in
tragedy, which
suggests the high esteem in which his work was held by later
Greeks.
Only two of the seven surviving plays can be dated securely:
Philoctetes (409
BC) and
Oedipus at
Colonus (401 BC, staged after Sophocles' death by his
grandson). Of the others,
Electra
shows stylistic similarities to these two plays, which suggests
that it was probably written in the latter part of his career.
Ajax,
Antigone and
The Trachiniae are generally thought to
be among his early works, again based on stylistic elements, with
Oedipus the King coming in
Sophocles' middle period. Most of Sophocles' plays show an
undercurrent of early
fatalism and the
beginnings of
Socratic logic as a mainstay
for the long tradition of Greek tragedy.
The Theban plays
The Theban plays consist of three plays:
Antigone,
Oedipus the King (also called
Oedipus Tyrannus or
Oedipus Rex), and
Oedipus at Colonus. All
three plays concern the fate of
Thebes during and after the reign
of King
Oedipus. They have often been
published under a single cover. Sophocles, however, wrote the three
plays for separate
festival competitions,
many years apart. Not only are the Theban plays not a true
trilogy (three plays presented as a continuous
narrative) but they are not even an intentional series and contain
some inconsistencies between them. He also wrote other plays having
to do with Thebes, such as
The
Progeny, of which only fragments have survived.
Subjects
Each of the plays relates to the tale of the mythological
Oedipus, who killed his father and married his
mother without knowledge that they were his parents. His family is
fated to be doomed for three generations.
In
Oedipus the King,
Oedipus is the
protagonist. He becomes
the ruler of Thebes after solving the riddle of the
sphinx. Before solving this riddle, Oedipus had met
at a crossroads a man accompanied by servants; Oedipus and the man
fought, and Oedipus killed the man. Oedipus continued on to Thebes
to marry the widowed Queen, who was, unknown to him, his mother.
Oedipus eventually learns that his mother and father gave him up
when he was just an infant in fear that he would kill his father
and fulfill the Delphic Oracle's prophecy of him. Upon learning of
the completed prophecy, his mother, Jocasta, realizes the incest
and commits suicide; Oedipus, in horror of what he has seen, blinds
himself and leaves Thebes. The couple had four children, who figure
in the remaining plays of the set.
In
Oedipus at Colonus, the
banished Oedipus and his daughters Antigone and Ismene arrive at
the town of Colonus
where they
encounter Theseus, King of Athens
.
Oedipus dies and strife begins between his sons
Polyneices and
Eteocles.
In
Antigone the
protagonist is Oedipus' daughter. Antigone is faced with the choice
of allowing her brother Polyneices' body to remain unburied,
outside the city walls, exposed to the ravages of wild animals, or
to bury him and face death. The king of the land, Creon, has
forbidden the burial of Polyneices for he was a traitor to the
city. Antigone decides to bury his body and face the consequences
of her actions. Creon sentences her to death. Eventually, Creon is
convinced to free Antigone from her punishment, but his decision
comes too late and Antigone commits suicide. Her suicide triggers
the suicide of two others close to King Creon: his son, Haemon, who
was to wed Antigone, and his wife who commits suicide after losing
her only surviving son.
Composition and inconsistencies
The plays were written across thirty-six years of Sophocles' career
and were not composed in chronological order, but instead were
written in the order
Antigone,
Oedipus the King, and
Oedipus at Colonus. As a result,
there are some inconsistencies: notably,
Creon
is the undisputed king at the end of
Oedipus the King and,
in consultation with Apollo, single-handedly makes the decision to
expel Oedipus from Thebes. Creon is also instructed to look after
Oedipus' daughters
Antigone and
Ismene at the end of
Oedipus the King. By
contrast, in the other plays there is some struggle with Oedipus'
sons
Eteocles and
Polynices in regards to the succession. In
Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles attempts to work these
inconsistencies into a coherent whole:
Ismene
explains that, in light of their tainted family lineage, her
brothers were at first willing to cede the throne to Creon.
Nevertheless, they eventually decided to take charge of the
monarchy, with each brother disputing the other's right to succeed.
In addition to being in a clearly more powerful position in
Oedipus at Colonus, Eteocles and Polynices are also
culpable: they condemn their father to exile, which is one of his
bitterest charges against them.
Other plays
Other than the three Theban plays, there are four surviving plays
by Sophocles:
Ajax,
The Trachiniae,
Electra, and
Philoctetes, the last of which
won first prize.
Ajax focuses on the
prideful
hero of the Trojan War. He is driven to treachery and
eventually his own death. Ajax becomes gravely upset when
Achilles’ armor is presented to
Odysseus instead of himself. Despite their enmity
toward him, Odysseus persuades the kings
Menelaus and
Agamemnon to
grant Ajax a proper burial.
The Trachiniae (named for the Trachinian women who make up
the chorus) dramatizes
Deianeira's
accidentally killing
Heracles after he had
completed his famous twelve labors. Tricked into thinking it is a
love charm, Deianeira applies poison to an article of Heracles'
clothing; this poisoned robe causes Heracles to die an excruciating
death. Upon learning the truth, Deianeira commits suicide.
Electra Corresponds roughly to the plot of Aeschylus'
Libation Bearers. It
details
Electra and
Orestes' avenging their father
Agamemnon's murder by
Clytemnestra and
Aegisthus.
Philoctetes retells the story of its
title character, an archer who had been
abandoned on Lemnos
by the rest
of the Greek fleet while on the way to Troy
.
After learning that they cannot win the
Trojan War without Philoctetes' bow, the Greeks
send
Odysseus and
Neoptolemus to retrieve him; due to the Greeks'
earlier treachery, however, Philoctetes refuses to rejoin the army.
It is only Heracles'
deus ex machina
appearance that persuades Philoctetes to go to Troy.
Fragmentary plays
Fragments
of The Tracking Satyrs
(Ichneutae) were discovered in Egypt
in
1907. These amount to about half of the play, making it the
best preserved
satyr play after
Euripides'
Cyclops, which
survives in its entirety.
Fragments of The
Progeny (Epigonoi) were discovered in April 2005
by classicists at Oxford University
with the help of infrared
technology previously used for satellite
imaging. The tragedy tells the story of the second
siege of Thebes
. A
number of other Sophoclean works have survived only in fragments,
including:
- * Aias Lokros (Ajax the Locrian)
- * Akhaiôn Syllogos (The Gathering of the
Achaeans)
- * Aleadae (The Sons of Aleus)
- * Creusa
- * Eurypylus
- * Hermione
- * Inachos
- *
Lacaenae (Lacaenian
Women)
- * Manteis or Polyidus (The Prophets
or Polyidus)
- * Nauplios Katapleon (Nauplius' Arrival)
- * Nauplios Pyrkaeus (Nauplius' Fires)
- * Niobe
- * Oeneus
- * Oenomaus
- * Poimenes (The Shepherds)
- * Polyxene
- * Syndeipnoi (The Diners, or, The
Banqueters)
- * Tereus
- * Thyestes
- * Troilus
- * Phaedra
- * Triptolemus
- * Tyro Keiromene (Tyro Shorn)
- * Tyro Anagnorizomene (Tyro
Rediscovered).
Sophocles' view of his own work
There is a passage of
Plutarch's tract
De Profectibus in Virtute 7 in which Sophocles discusses
his own growth as a writer. A likely source of this material for
Plutarch was the
Epidemiae of Ion of Chios, a book that
recorded many conversations of Sophocles. This book is a likely
candidate to have contained Sophocles' discourse on his own
development because Ion was a friend of Sophocles, and the book is
known to have been used by Plutarch. Though some interpretations of
Plutarch's words suggest that Sophocles says that he imitated
Aeschylus, the translation does not fit grammatically, nor does the
interpretation that Sophocles said that he was making fun of
Aeschylus' works.
C. M. Bowra argues
for the following translation of the line:"After practising to the
full the bigness of Aeschylus, then the painful ingenuity of my own
invention, now in the third stage I am changing to the kind of
diction which is most expressive of character and best."
Here Sophocles says that he has completed a stage of Aeschylus'
work, meaning that he went through a phase of imitating Aeschylus'
style but is finished with that. Sophocles' opinion of Aeschylus
was mixed. He certainly respected him enough to imitate his work
early on in his career, but he had reservations about Aeschylus'
style, and thus did not keep his imitation up. Sophocles' first
stage, in which he imitated Aeschylus, is marked by "Aeschylean
pomp in the language". Sophocles' second stage was entirely his
own. He introduced new ways of evoking feeling out of an audience,
like in his
Ajax when he is mocked by Athene, then the
stage is emptied so that he may commit suicide alone. Sophocles
mentions a third stage, distinct from the other two, in his
discussion of his development. The third stage pays more heed to
diction. His characters spoke in a way that was more natural to
them and more expressive of their individual character
feelings.
Notes
- Suda (ed. Finkel et al.): s.v. .
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
- Freeman: 247
- Sommerstein (2002): 41
- Sommerstein (2007): xi
- Lloyd-Jones 1994: 7
- Freeman: 246
- Life of Cimon 8. Whatever the merit of the rest of the
story, Plutarch is obviously mistaken about Aeschylus' death during
this trip; he went on to produce dramas in Athens for another
decade.
- Beer 2004, 67.
- Clinton, Kevin "The Epidauria and the Arrival of Asclepius in
Athens", in Ancient Greek Cult Practice from the Epigraphical
Evidence, edited by R. Hägg, Stockholm, 1994.
- Lloyd-Jones: 12-13
- Schultz 1835, 150-1
- Lucas 1964, 128.
- Cicero recounts this
story in his De Senectute 7.22.
- Sommerstein (2002): 41-42
- For the erastês-eromenos relationship in
ancient Greece, see (e.g.) Johnson/Ryan 2005, 3-4.
- Athenaeus attributes this to the Encounters of
Ion of Chios.
See Hubbard 2003, 80.
- From the Historical Notes of Hieronymus of
Rhodes. See Hubbard 2003, 81.
- Life of Pericles 8.5.
- Plato, The Republic, 1.329c.
- Friederich Karl Forberg, Manual of Classical Erotology (De
Figuris Veneris); p.74 N26
- Lee Alexander Stone, The Power of a Symbol, p.229
- Aristotle. Ars Poetica.
- Lloyd-Jones 1994: 8-9
- Scullion, pp. 85–86, rejects attempts to date Antigone
to shortly before 441/0 based on an anecdote that the play led to
Sophocles' election as general. On other grounds, he cautiously
suggests c. 450 BC.
- Sophocles, ed Grene and Lattimore, pp. 1–2.
- See for example: "Sophocles: The Theban Plays", Penguin Books,
1947; Sophocles I: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus,
Antigone, University of Chicago, 1991; Sophocles: The
Theban Plays: Antigone/King Oidipous/Oidipous at Colonus,
Focus Publishing/R. Pullins Company, 2002; Sophocles, The
Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone,
Harvest Books, 2002; Sophocles, Works, Loeb
Classical Library, Vol I. London, W. Heinemann; New
York,Macmillan, 1912 (often reprinted) - the 1994 Loeb, however,
prints Sophocles in chronological order.
- Sophocles, ed Grene and Lattimore, pp. 1–2.
- Murray, Matthew, " Newly Readable Oxyrhynchus Papyri Reveal Works by
Sophocles, Lucian, and Others", Theatermania,
18 April 2005. Retrieved 9 July 2007.
- Sophocles, ed. Grene and Lattimore, pp. 1–2.
- Freeman: 247–248
- Seaford: 1361
- Murray, Matthew, " Newly Readable Oxyrhynchus Papyri Reveal Works by
Sophocles, Lucian, and Others", Theatermania,
18 April 2005. Retrieved 9 July 2007.
- Bowra: 386
- Bowra: 401
- Bowra: 389
- Bowra: 392
- Bowra: 396
- Bowra: 385–401
References
- Beer, Josh (2004). Sophocles and the Tragedy of Athenian
Democracy. Greenwood Publishing. ISBN 0313289468
- Freeman, Charles. (1999). The Greek Achievement: The
Foundation of the Western World. New York: Viking Press. ISBN
0670885150
- Hubbard, Thomas K. (2003). Homosexuality in Greece and
Rome: a Sourcebook of Basic Documents.
- Johnson, Marguerite & Terry Ryan (2005). Sexuality in
Greek and Roman Society and Literature: a Sourcebook.
Routledge. ISBN 0415173310, 9780415173315
- Lloyd-Jones, Hugh (ed.) (1994). Sophocles.
Ajax. Electra. Oedipus Tyrannus. Harvard
University Press.
- Lucas, Donald William (1964). The Greek Tragic Poets.
W.W. Norton & Co.
- Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6
translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press;
London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
- Schultz, Ferdinand (1835). De vita Sophoclis poetae
commentatio. Phil. Diss., Berlin.[4448]
- Scullion, Scott (2002). Tragic dates, Classical
Quarterly, new sequence 52, pp. 81–101.
- Sommerstein, Alan Herbert (2002). Greek Drama and
Dramatists. Routledge. ISBN 0415260272
- Sommerstein, Alan Herbert (2007). "General Introduction"
pp.xi-xxix in Sommerstein, A.H., Fitzpatrick, D. and Tallboy, T.
Sophocles: Selected Fragmentary Plays: Volume 1. Aris and
Phillips. ISBN 0856687669
- Sophocles. Sophocles I: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at
Colonus, Antigone. 2nd ed. Grene, David and Lattimore,
Richard, eds. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1991.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. "Macropaedia Knowledge In
Depth." The New Encyclopaedia Britannica Volume 20. Chicago:
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2005. 344-346.
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