I.

Introduction

Sophocles (496?-406? bc), Athenian dramatist, ranking with Aeschylus and Euripides as one of the three great tragic dramatists of ancient Greece. His best-known plays are Antigone and Oedipus Rex (Oedipus Tyrannus in Greek).

II.

Life of Sophocles

Sophocles was born about 496 bc in Colonus Hippius (now part of Athens), the son of Sophillus, reportedly a wealthy armor-maker. Sophocles was provided with the best traditional aristocratic education. As a young man he was chosen to lead a chorus of youths who celebrated the Greek naval victory over the Persians at Salamís in 480 bc (see Persian Wars). In 468 bc, at the age of 28, he defeated Aeschylus, whose preeminence as a tragic poet had long been undisputed, in a dramatic competition. From 468 bc on, Sophocles was the most consistently successful Athenian dramatist, winning first prize about 20 times and many second prizes. He was also the most prolific dramatist; he wrote more than 120 plays.

Sophocles was not only a popular playwright but also a popular man. His life, which ended about 406 bc when he was around 90, coincided with the period of Athenian greatness. He numbered among his friends the historian Herodotus, and he was an associate of the statesman Pericles. He was not politically active or militarily inclined, although he accepted several political offices and was twice elected by the Athenians to high military office.

III.

Sophocles as Dramatist

Sophocles composed more than 120 plays. Of these, 7 complete tragedies and fragments of 80 or 90 others are preserved. The seven surviving plays are Antigone, Oedipus Rex or Oedipus Tyrannus (Oedipus the King), Electra, Ajax, Trachiniae (Maidens of Trachis), Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus. Also preserved is a large fragment of the Ichneutae (Investigators), a satiric drama discovered on papyrus in Egypt in 1907. The earliest of the surviving tragedies is thought to be Ajax (approximately 451-444 bc). The next are probably Antigone and Trachiniae (both after 441). Oedipus Rex is generally dated shortly after 430 because of a probable reference to a plague in Athens that year. Most experts consider Electra a late play, dating as late as 410 bc. Philoctetes is known to date from 409 bc. Oedipus at Colonus was first produced posthumously in 401 bc.

A.

Technique

All seven of the surviving Sophoclean tragedies are considered outstanding for their powerful, intricate plots and dramatic style. At least three—Antigone, Oedipus Rex, and Oedipus at Colonus—are generally regarded as masterpieces. Sophocles introduced a major innovation when he abandoned the trilogy format of his predecessor Aeschylus, who presented at dramatic festivals three plays united by plot, characters, and theme. Sophocles, by contrast, presented plays that, so far as we know, were unconnected. By turning away from the trilogy, Sophocles could create tighter, more concentrated plots.

By abandoning the trilogy, Sophocles also reduced the importance of the chorus in Greek tragedy. In Aeschylus the chorus constantly relates the actions and suffering of individuals to an overall framework of divine purpose; the chorus also relates the present to the past and the future. Sophocles continues to use the chorus in most of his plays, but it serves primarily to suggest the larger moral and religious dilemmas posed by human actions.

Another technical innovation for which Sophocles was famous was the introduction of a third character. Previous plays had been built around two characters. The high points of Sophoclean drama are scenes of revelation that feature three actors.

B.

Thought

The plays of Sophocles reduce the emphasis on divine will—or relegate the will of the gods to the background—and stress instead the importance of human will. In Aeschylus, Sophocles’s most important predecessor, the will of the gods moves in and above human motives. This shift in emphasis enables Sophocles to concentrate on human character, and he produces an astonishing variety of unique, unforgettable individuals. His tragedies present a particular movement of crisis and revelation.

Many Sophoclean tragedies present us with a human being suddenly faced, during a crisis, with the mystery of a universe that imposes failure, agony, and death, defying human ingenuity and understanding. Antigone, for example, develops a main Sophoclean theme: the pain and suffering caused when an individual obstinately defies divine will or political authority, or refuses to yield to destiny and circumstance. The person’s obedience instead to some inner compulsion leads to agonizing revelation and, ultimately, to a mysterious vindication of that person’s behavior and life. Antigone defies the decree of Creon, the ruler of Thebes, and instead bestows the rites of burial upon her battle-slain brother Polynices. Creon has declared Polynices a traitor and ordered that his body be left to rot. In defying Creon, Antigone brings about her own death; the death of her lover Haemon, who is Creon’s son; and that of Eurydice, Creon’s wife.

Human ignorance is another Sophoclean theme. The characteristic Sophoclean hero is someone who begins with a confident assumption of knowledge and ends admitting ignorance or doubt. Even the heroic confidence of Antigone dissolves in doubt in her final speech. This theme is presented in its classic and most terrifying form in Oedipus Rex. The plot of Oedipus Rex turns on the gradual revelation to the mythological hero Oedipus of the dreadful truth that he has become ruler of Thebes by first unwittingly slaying his father and then marrying his mother, the queen Jocasta.

The mystery of the divine stands opposed to human suffering and ignorance. The divine has knowledge—its prophecies are always correct—and it seems to stand, in terms that the human mind can scarcely comprehend, for some pattern of order and perhaps even justice. In a universe so conceived, the human will to action might be expected to wither and disappear. However, Sophoclean heroes are remarkable for their stubborn insistence on action or understanding and for their fierce maintenance of independence. Oedipus stubbornly pursues the search for the truth about himself to the point where he sacrifices his reputation, his kingdom, and finally his eyes. Antigone defies the force of public opinion and the decrees of the state. The balance between the omniscient design of the gods and the heroic force of human will produces the dramatic tension that has kept the plays of Sophocles alive.

C.

Achievement

Sophocles is considered by many modern scholars the greatest of the Greek tragedians and the perfect mean between the titanic symbolism of Aeschylus and the rhetorical realism of Euripides. The contributions made by Sophocles to dramatic technique were numerous, and two of his innovations were especially important. He increased the number of actors from two to three, thus lessening the influence of the chorus and making possible greater complication of the plot and the more effective portrayal of character by contrast and juxtaposition; and he changed the Aeschylean fashion of composing plays in groups of three, each of them part of a central myth or theme, and made each play an independent psychological and dramatic unity. Sophocles also effected a transformation in the spirit and significance of a tragedy; thereafter, although problems of religion and morality still provided the themes, the nature of individuals, their problems, and their struggles became the chief interest of Greek tragedy.

IV.

The Plays of Sophocles

A.

Ajax

Before the play opens, Ajax, a hero of the Trojan War, has grown bitter because the arms of the fallen Greek hero Achilles were awarded to someone else. He has tried to kill the Greek kings Agamemnon and Menelaus, who awarded the arms, as well as Odysseus, who received the arms. However, the goddess Athena caused Ajax to kill captured Trojan cattle instead. In the play’s prologue Athena exposes the situation of the deluded Ajax to Odysseus. Odysseus pities Ajax, but Athena does not. In the following scenes Ajax regains his sanity and with the help of his mistress Tecmessa finds out what he has done. When he realizes the truth he decides to kill himself, rejecting Tecmessa’s moving appeal.

A notable scene follows in which Ajax appears to debate this decision with himself. The speech is ambiguous throughout, and at the end the chorus, believing that he has given up suicide, sings a joyful ode. In the next scene Ajax kills himself on stage, a scene without parallel in Athenian tragedy. Ajax’s brother Teucer comes too late to save his life, but defends the corpse of Ajax against the kings who declare it shall be left unburied. Two scenes of furious argument result in deadlock, which is broken by Odysseus, who persuades King Agamemnon to permit the burial of Ajax.

The play is remarkable for its presentation of Athena as a fierce, vengeful deity, its favorable treatment of Odysseus (a rare phenomenon in fifth-century tragedy), and the so-called ambiguous speech, which is Sophoclean poetry at its best.

B.

Antigone

Antigone, the title character, sets out to bury her brother Polynices, defying the order of Creon, the new king of Thebes. Creon has ordered that the body of Polynices, who died as a traitor in an assault on his native city, be left to rot, exposed to the dogs and birds. Antigone is caught after performing funeral rites and brought before Creon. For her defiance she is condemned to death.

Creon’s son Haemon, who is engaged to Antigone, tries in vain to reason with his father. Antigone is led off to prison and in a remarkable speech tries to analyze her motives for her action. She strips them down to a purely personal love for her brother and abandons the motives of religious and family duty that she announced earlier. The prophet Tiresias now tells Creon to bury Polynices, and Creon, at first stubborn, finally relents.

Creon goes to bury Polynices and release Antigone. However, as we are told by a messenger, Antigone had already hanged herself before he arrived. Haemon, after lunging at his father with a sword, takes his own life. Creon’s wife, Eurydice, goes off to kill herself; she accuses Creon of killing her child. The play ends with Creon’s distraught cries as he carries on stage the body of his son.

The play owes much of its modern significance to the conflict between the individual conscience and the decrees of the state, a conflict that the play dramatizes. The play was once criticized because Antigone disappears from the action early. More recent critical opinion tends to consider Creon as important to the play as Antigone.

C.

Oedipus Rex

The people of Thebes come to beg their king, Oedipus, to save them from the plague. Creon, the brother of Oedipus’s wife, announced that the murderer of Laius, the previous king, must first be punished. Oedipus decides to find the murderer. The prophet Tiresias, summoned at Creon’s suggestion, accuses Oedipus of the murder. Oedipus suspects a plot inspired by Creon, condemns Creon to death, but relents at the urging of his wife, Jocasta.

From here, the plot intricacies defy easy summary. Oedipus pushes ahead to the bitter end with his search for the murderer and the truth, learning that he himself was the murderer of Laius, that Laius was his father, and that Jocasta is his mother. In a terrifying scene Jocasta realizes the truth before Oedipus does, tries to stop his headlong pursuit of the truth, and, failing, goes off to hang herself. When Oedipus in the next scene learns the truth, he runs into the house. A messenger comes to tell us he has blinded himself, and soon Oedipus comes on stage, his face running with blood. In a final scene with Creon, the new ruler of Thebes, Oedipus regains mastery of himself and some measure of his old confidence.

Oedipus Rex is justly famed for its flawless construction, its dramatic power, and its effective dramatic irony. The play’s superb dramatic art and the power and terror of its theme have won it a commanding position among the masterpieces of world drama, including even the great tragedies of William Shakespeare. Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his well-known statement on drama, the Poetics, considered Oedipus Rex the most typical and in many respects the most perfect of the Greek tragedies.

D.

Electra

Orestes, the brother of Electra, arrives home from exile to avenge the murder of his father by his mother, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus. His plan is to enter the house as a stranger bringing the ashes of Orestes, whom he claims was killed in a chariot race. From this point on Electra dominates the stage. She has lived a life of poverty, humiliation, and hatred ever since her father’s murder.

In scenes with her sister, Chrysothemis, and her mother, Clytemnestra, Electra reveals the strength of her hatred and her commitment to revenge. The tutor who has accompanied Orestes enters and describes the death of Orestes. Electra’s hope that her brother will avenge the murder is gone, but she tries to persuade Chrysothemis to join her in a desperate attack on Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. Rebuffed, she announces she will do it alone.

Orestes then enters with the urn of ashes. Electra makes a moving farewell speech over it and Orestes, recognizing his sister in this bitter, aging woman dressed in rags, breaks down, forgets his plan, and tells her who he is. Their joyful reunion is interrupted by the tutor who returns Orestes to reality—he must go in and kill his mother. He does, and when he comes out of the palace he answers Electra’s questions with subdued, ambiguous words. The play ends with a highly dramatic scene in which Aegisthus, presented with the body of Clytemnestra (which he thinks is that of Orestes), uncovers the face and realizes the truth. He is driven into the house to his death.

The play is a dramatic masterpiece, but no agreement has been reached on the vital question of Sophocles’s attitude (and the attitude the audience is to take) as to whether matricide (murder of one’s mother) can ever be justified.

E.

Philoctetes

On the way to Troy and the Trojan War, the Greeks abandoned the archer Philoctetes, who had been poisoned by a snakebite, on the island of Lemnos. In the last year of the siege of Troy, they learned that Troy would fall only to Philoctetes and his weapon, the bow of Hercules (Heracles in Greek mythology). The Greek hero Odysseus and Neoptolemus, the young son of Achilles, come to Lemnos to bring Philoctetes to Troy. Of the three courses open to them—force, persuasion, and deceit—they try the last.

The intrigue is one of the most complicated in Greek tragedy. Through the turns in the plot, Neoptolemus gradually becomes disgusted by the lies in which he has participated. He finally tells Philoctetes the truth, but Odysseus intervenes and Philoctetes is left, without his bow, alone. Neoptolemus returns, defies the threats of Odysseus, and gives Philoctetes back his bow. Neoptolemus then tries to persuade Philoctetes to come to Troy. Philoctetes, however, is persuaded only when the god Heracles comes to tell him that the bow was given him for heroic action.

The play is considered by some to be Sophocles’s masterpiece in the presentation of character. The stages in Neoptolemus’s return to his true nature are described with masterly precision, and so is the psychology of Philoctetes, the wronged hero who clings to his role of victim.

F.

Oedipus at Colonus

The blind Oedipus, expelled from Thebes by Creon, the new king, and his own sons, arrives at Colonus, just north of Athens, led by his daughter Antigone. When he is told where he is, a strange confidence fills him; he knows that this is the place where he will die. His daughter Ismene comes to tell him that the gods have declared that his burial place will be the site of a victory. Oedipus confers this benefit on Athens, cursing Creon and his own sons.

Creon, after trying to persuade Oedipus to come home to Thebes, seizes Antigone and sends her away. The Athenian hero Theseus comes to the rescue and brings Antigone back to her father.

Oedipus’s son Polynices comes to beg for his father’s help against his brother in Thebes; Oedipus denounces him and curses both his sons. Thunder sounds, and Oedipus goes off to his death. His disappearance is mysterious, and only Theseus knows where he is buried.

This strange play, written toward the end of the Peloponnesian War, which Athens was about to lose, is full of a lyric Athenian patriotism that expresses Sophocles’s confidence in the immortality of Athens. The end of Oedipus at Colonus is a religious mystery that is hard for the modern mind to accept. As Oedipus approaches some form of divinity he becomes harder, angrier, and fiercer, so that the play shows a progress from the humble acceptance of the opening scene to the towering, superhuman, righteous rage and sublime certainty of the hero’s last moments.