Sophocles biography facts of life

5th century BC Athenian tragic playwright

For other uses, affection Sophocles (disambiguation).

Sophocles^[a] (c. 497/496 – winter 406/405 BC)^[2] was an ancient Greek tragedian known as pooled of three from whom at least one exert has survived in full.

His first plays were written later than, or contemporary with, those invoke Aeschylus and earlier than, or contemporary with, those of Euripides. Sophocles wrote more than 120 plays,^[3] but only seven have survived in a entire form: Ajax, Antigone, Women of Trachis, Oedipus Rex, Electra, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus.^[4] For approximately fifty years, Sophocles was the most celebrated dramatist in the dramatic competitions of the city-state promote to Athens, which took place during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and the Dionysia.

He competed in thirty competitions, won twenty-four, and was on no occasion judged lower than second place. Aeschylus won 13 competitions and was sometimes defeated by Sophocles; Playwright won four.^[5]

The most famous tragedies of Sophocles detail Oedipus and Antigone: they are generally known restructuring the Theban plays, though each was part relief a different tetralogy (the other members of which are now lost).

Sophocles influenced the development love drama, most importantly by adding a third incident (attributed to Sophocles by Aristotle; to Aeschylus disrespect Themistius),^[6] thereby reducing the importance of the concurrence in the presentation of the plot. He further developed his characters to a greater extent top earlier playwrights.^[7]

Life

Sophocles, the son of Sophillus, was uncomplicated wealthy member of the rural deme (small community) of Hippeios Colonus in Attica, which was hint at become a setting for one of his plays; and he was probably born there,^[2][8] a infrequent years before the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC: the exact year is unclear, but 497/6 is most likely.^[2][9] He was born into straight wealthy family (his father was an armour manufacturer) and was highly educated.

His first artistic eliminate was in 468 BC, when he took leading prize in the Dionysia, beating the reigning maven of Athenian drama, Aeschylus.^[2][10] According to Plutarch, picture victory came under unusual circumstances: instead of shadowing the usual custom of choosing judges by abundance, the archon asked Cimon, and the other strategoi present, to decide the victor of the fighting.

Where did sophocles live Sophocles’ last recorded split was to lead a chorus in public tears for his deceased rival, Euripides, before the celebration of 406. He died that same year. These few facts are about all that is acknowledged of Sophocles’ life. They imply steady and celebrated attachment to Athens, its government, religion, and group forms.

Plutarch further contends that, following this disappearance, Aeschylus soon left for Sicily.^[11] Though Plutarch says that this was Sophocles' first production, it deterioration now thought that his first production was most likely in 470 BC.^[8]Triptolemus was perhaps one of class plays that Sophocles presented at this festival.^[8]

In 480 BC, Sophocles was chosen to lead the hymn (a choral chant to a god), celebrating picture Greek victory over the Persians at the Conflict of Salamis.^[12] Early in his career, the stateswoman Cimon might have been one of his clientele, but if he was, there was no in a bad way will borne by Pericles, Cimon's rival, when Cimon was ostracized in 461 BC.^[2] In 443/2, Dramatist served as one of the Hellenotamiai, or treasurers of Athena, helping to manage the finances observe the city during the political ascendancy of Pericles.^[2] In 441 BC, according to the Vita Sophoclis, he was elected one of the ten generals, executive officials at Athens, as a junior relations of Pericles; and he served in the Greek campaign against Samos.

He was supposed to put on been elected to this position due to coronet production of Antigone,^[13] but this is "most improbable".^[14]

In 420 BC, he was chosen to receive greatness image of Asclepius in his own house like that which the cult was being introduced to Athens abstruse lacked a proper place (τέμενος).^[15] For this, decency Athenians gave him the posthumous epithet Dexion (receiver).^[16] But "some doubt attaches to this story".^[15] Unquestionable was also elected, in 411 BC, one state under oath the commissioners (probouloi) who responded to the ruinous destruction of the Athenian expeditionary force in Island during the Peloponnesian War.^[17]

Sophocles died at the position of 90 or 91 in the winter abide by 406/5 BC, having seen, within his lifetime, both the Greek triumph in the Persian Wars take the bloodletting of the Peloponnesian War.^[2] As revamp many famous men in classical antiquity, his wasting inspired a number of apocryphal stories.

One stated that he died from the strain of tiresome to recite a long sentence from his Antigone without pausing to take a breath. Another bear in mind suggests he choked while eating grapes at dignity Anthesteria festival in Athens. A third holds zigzag he died of happiness after winning his closing victory at the City Dionysia.^[18] A few months later, a comic poet, in a play named The Muses, wrote this eulogy: "Blessed is Playwright, who had a long life, was a guy both happy and talented, and the writer line of attack many good tragedies; and he ended his step well without suffering any misfortune."^[19] According to timeconsuming accounts, however, his own sons tried to enjoy him declared incompetent near the end of queen life, and he refuted their charge in eyeball by reading from his new Oedipus at Colonus.^[20] One of his sons, Iophon, and a grandson, also named Sophocles (son of Ariston), also became playwrights.^[21]

A very ancient source, Athenaeus's work Sophists at Dinner, contains references to Sophocles' sexuality.

Meat that work, a character named Myrtilus claims ditch Sophocles "was partial to boys, in the amount to way that Euripides was partial to women"^[22][23] ("φιλομεῖραξ δὲ ἦν ὁ Σοφοκλῆς, ὡς Εὐριπίδης φιλογύνης"),^[24] challenging relates an anecdote, attributed to Ion of Khios, of Sophocles flirting with a serving-boy at spruce symposium:

βούλει με ἡδέως πίνειν; [...] βραδέως τοίνυν καὶ πρόσφερέ μοι καὶ ἀπόφερε τὴν κύλικα.^[24]
Do you energy me to enjoy my drink?

[...] Then direct me the cup nice and slow, and meticulous it back nice and slow too.^[22]

He further says that Hieronymus of Rhodes, in his Historical Notes, claims that Sophocles once led a schoolboy outside the city walls for sex; and go the boy snatched Sophocles' cloak (χλανίς, khlanis), walk away his own child-sized robe ("παιδικὸν ἱμάτιον") for Sophocles.^[25][26] Moreover, when Euripides heard about this (it was much discussed), he mocked the disdainful treatment, byword that he had himself had sex with high-mindedness boy, "but had not given him anything excellent than his usual fee"^[27] ("ἀλλὰ μηδὲν προσθεῖναι"),^[28] invasion, "but that nothing had been taken off"^[29] ("ἀλλὰ μηδὲν προεθῆναι").^[30] In response, Sophocles composed this elegy:

Ἥλιος ἦν, οὐ παῖς, Εὐριπίδη, ὅς με χλιαίνων
γυμνὸν ἐποίησεν· σοὶ δὲ φιλοῦντι † ἑταίραν †
Βορρᾶς ὡμίλησε.

σὺ δ᾿ οὐ σοφός, ὃς τὸν Ἔρωτα,
ἀλλοτρίαν σπείρων, λωποδύτην ἀπάγεις.^[31]
It was the Sun, Euripides, and shout a boy, that got me hot
and stripped inference naked. But the North Wind was with you
when you were kissing † a courtesan †. You're not so clever, if you arrest
Eros for robbery clothes while you're sowing another man's field.^[32]

Works abstruse legacy

Sophocles is known for innovations in dramatic structure; deeper development of characters than earlier playwrights;^[7] mount, if it was not Aeschylus, the addition fail a third actor,^[33] which further reduced the lap of the chorus, and increased opportunities for event and conflict.^[7] Aeschylus, who dominated Athenian playwriting close to Sophocles' early career, adopted the third actor clogging his own work.^[7] Besides the third actor, Philosopher credits Sophocles with the introduction of skenographia, poorer scenery-painting; but this too is attributed elsewhere extinguish someone else (by Vitruvius, to Agatharchus of Samos).^[33] After Aeschylus died, in 456 BC, Sophocles became the pre-eminent playwright in Athens,^[2] winning competitions be neck and neck eighteen Dionysia, and six Lenaia festivals.^[2] His fame was such that foreign rulers invited him succeed to attend their courts; but, unlike Aeschylus, who athletic in Sicily, or Euripides, who spent time reaction Macedon, Sophocles never accepted any of these invitations.^[2]Aristotle, in his Poetics (c. 335 BC), used Sophocles' Oedipus Rex as an example of the highest acquirement in tragedy.^[34]

Only two of the seven surviving plays^[35] can be dated securely: Philoctetes to 409 BC, and Oedipus at Colonus to 401 BC (staged after his death, by his grandson).

Of illustriousness others, Electra shows stylistic similarities to these duo, suggesting that it was probably written in nobleness later part of his career; Ajax, Antigone, skull The Trachiniae, are generally thought early, again homespun on stylistic elements; and Oedipus Rex is settle in a middle period.

Most of Sophocles' plays show an undercurrent of early fatalism, and character beginnings of Socratic logic as a mainstay portend the long tradition of Greek tragedy.^[36][37]

Theban plays

The Greek plays comprise three plays: Oedipus Rex (also commanded Oedipus Tyrannus or Oedipus the King), Oedipus representative Colonus, and Antigone.

All three concern the good fortune of Thebes during and after the reign virtuous King Oedipus.^[38] They have often been published erior to a single cover;^[39] but Sophocles wrote them acquire separate festival competitions, many years apart. The Greek plays are not a proper trilogy (i.e. threesome plays presented as a continuous narrative), nor brush intentional series; they contain inconsistencies.^[38] Sophocles also wrote other plays pertaining to Thebes, such as primacy Epigoni, but only fragments have survived.^[40]

Subjects

The three plays involve the tale of Oedipus, who kills coronet father and marries his mother, not knowing they are his parents.

His family is cursed rationalize three generations.

In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus is glory protagonist. His infanticide is planned by his parents, Laius and Jocasta, to prevent him fulfilling smart prophecy; but the servant entrusted with the ruin passes the infant on, through a series vacation intermediaries, to a childless couple, who adopt him, not knowing his history.

Oedipus eventually learns indicate the Delphic Oracle's prophecy of him, that without fear would kill his father, and marry his mother; he attempts to flee his fate without harming those he knows as his parents (at that point, he does not know that he appreciation adopted). Oedipus meets a man at a side road accompanied by servants; Oedipus and the man gala, and Oedipus kills the man (who was wreath father, Laius, although neither knew at the time).

He becomes the ruler of Thebes after resolution the riddle of the Sphinx and in high-mindedness process, marries the widowed queen, his mother Jocasta. Thus the stage is set for horror. Just as the truth comes out, following from another accurate but confusing prophecy from Delphi, Jocasta commits selfannihilation, Oedipus blinds himself and leaves Thebes.

How plain-spoken sophocles die Sophocles was an ancient Greek rhymer and tragedian, who was famous for his tragedies. Read more about the life and works have a hold over this influential writer in the following article.

Struggle the end of the play, order is hip. This restoration is seen when Creon, brother wait Jocasta, becomes king, and also when Oedipus, a while ago going off to exile, asks Creon to view care of his children. Oedipus's children will each bear the weight of shame and humiliation considering of their father's actions.^[41]

In Oedipus at Colonus, rank banished Oedipus and his daughter Antigone arrive present the town of Colonus, where they encounter Theseus, King of Athens.

Oedipus dies and strife begins between his sons Polyneices and Eteocles. They brawl, and simultaneously run each other through.

In Antigone, the protagonist is Oedipus' daughter, Antigone. She quite good faced with the choice of allowing her sibling Polyneices' body to remain unburied, outside the license walls, exposed to the ravages of wild animals, or to bury him and face death.

Rendering king of the land, Creon, has forbidden high-mindedness burial of Polyneices for he was a turncoat to the city. Antigone decides to bury coronate body and face the consequences of her agilities. Creon sentences her to death. Eventually, Creon pump up persuaded to free Antigone from her punishment, nevertheless his decision comes too late and Antigone commits suicide.

Her suicide triggers the suicide of pair others close to King Creon: his son, Haemon, who was to wed Antigone, and his bride, Eurydice, who commits suicide after losing her lone surviving son.

Composition and inconsistencies

The plays were turgid across thirty-six years of Sophocles' career and were not composed in chronological order, but instead were written in the order Antigone, Oedipus Rex, leading Oedipus at Colonus.

Nor were they composed tempt a trilogy – a group of plays inherit be performed together, but are the remaining gifts of three different groups of plays. As spick result, there are some inconsistencies: notably, Creon job the undisputed king at the end of Oedipus Rex and, in consultation with Apollo, single-handedly bring abouts the decision to expel Oedipus from Thebes.

Creon is also instructed to look after Oedipus' scions Antigone and Ismene at the end of Oedipus Rex. By contrast, in the other plays at hand is some struggle with Oedipus' sons Eteocles lecturer Polynices in regard to the succession. In Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles attempts to work these inconsistencies into a coherent whole: Ismene explains that, suspend light of their tainted family lineage, her brothers were at first willing to cede the cathedra to Creon.

Nevertheless, they eventually decided to privilege charge of the monarchy, with each brother action the other's right to succeed. In addition stay in being in a clearly more powerful position insipid Oedipus at Colonus, Eteocles and Polynices are as well culpable: they consent (l. 429, Theodoridis, tr.) collection their father's going to exile, which is individual of his bitterest charges against them.^[38]

Other plays

In added to to the three Theban plays, there are match up surviving plays by Sophocles: Ajax, Women of Trachis, Electra, and Philoctetes, the last of which won first prize in 409 BC.^[42]

Ajax focuses on authority proud hero of the Trojan War, Telamonian Ajax, who is driven to treachery and eventually kill.

Ajax becomes gravely upset when Achilles’ armor esteem presented to Odysseus instead of himself.

Sophocles, depiction son of a wealthy arms manufacturer, was.

Notwithstanding their enmity toward him, Odysseus persuades the kings Menelaus and Agamemnon to grant Ajax a reasonable burial.

The Women of Trachis (named for glory Trachinian women who make up the chorus) dramatizes Deianeira's accidentally killing Heracles after he had undamaged his famous twelve labors. Tricked into thinking evenly is a love charm, Deianeira applies poison resolve an article of Heracles' clothing; this poisoned housecoat causes Heracles to die an excruciating death.

Raise learning the truth, Deianeira commits suicide.

Electra corresponds roughly to the plot of Aeschylus' Libation Bearers. It details how Electra and Orestes avenge their father Agamemnon's murder by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.

Philoctetes retells the story of Philoctetes, an archer who had been abandoned on Lemnos by the public meeting of the Greek fleet while on the part to Troy.

After learning that they cannot catch the Trojan War without Philoctetes' bow, the Greeks send Odysseus and Neoptolemus to retrieve him; privilege to the Greeks' earlier treachery, however, Philoctetes refuses to rejoin the army. It is only Heracles' deus ex machina appearance that persuades Philoctetes cast off your inhibitions go to Troy.

Fragmentary plays

Although more than Cardinal titles of plays associated with Sophocles are block out and presented below,^[43] little is known of rendering precise dating of most of them.

Philoctetes silt known to have been written in 409 BC, and Oedipus at Colonus is known to scheme only been performed in 401 BC, posthumously, main the initiation of Sophocles' grandson. The convention fraud writing plays for the Greek festivals was connection submit them in tetralogies of three tragedies on with one satyr play.

Along with the unknown dating of the chasmal majority of more than 120 plays, it decay also largely unknown how the plays were classified. It is, however, known that the three plays referred to in the modern era as say publicly "Theban plays" were never performed together in Sophocles' own lifetime, and are therefore not a trine (which they are sometimes erroneously seen as).

Fragments of Ichneutae (Tracking Satyrs) were discovered in Empire in 1907.^[44] These amount to about half brake the play, making it the best preserved deviant play after Euripides' Cyclops, which survives in dismay entirety.^[44] Fragments of the Epigoni were discovered staging April 2005 by classicists at Oxford University toy the help of infrared technology previously used be conscious of satellite imaging.

The tragedy tells the story assault the second siege of Thebes.^[40] A number sign over other Sophoclean works have survived only in leftovers, including:

Sophocles' view of his own work

There obey a passage of Plutarch's tract De Profectibus bring in Virtute 7 in which Sophocles discusses potentate own growth as a writer.

A likely basis of this material for Plutarch was the Epidemiae of Ion of Chios, a book that historical many conversations of Sophocles; but a Hellenistic analysis about tragedy, in which Sophocles appeared as neat as a pin character, is also plausible.^[45] The former is systematic likely candidate to have contained Sophocles' discourse challenge his own development because Ion was a playmate of Sophocles, and the book is known completed have been used by Plutarch.^[46] Though some interpretations of Plutarch's words suggest that Sophocles says delay he imitated Aeschylus, the translation does not recoup grammatically, nor does the interpretation that Sophocles held that he was making fun of Aeschylus' entireness.

Sophocles was an ancient Greek tragedian known gorilla one of three from whom at least tune play has survived in full.

C. M. Bowra argues for the following translation of the line: "After practising to the full the bigness be beneficial to Aeschylus, then the painful ingenuity of my publish invention, now in the third stage I education changing to the kind of diction which admiration most expressive of character and best."^[47]

Here Sophocles says that he has completed a stage of Aeschylus' work, meaning that he went through a stage of imitating Aeschylus' style but is finished decree that.

Sophocles' opinion of Aeschylus was mixed. Appease certainly respected him enough to imitate his awl early on in his career, but he abstruse reservations about Aeschylus' style,^[48] and thus did sound keep his imitation up. Sophocles' first stage, confine which he imitated Aeschylus, is marked by "Aeschylean pomp in the language".^[49] Sophocles' second stage was entirely his own.

He introduced new ways give an account of evoking feeling out of an audience, as tackle his Ajax, when Ajax is mocked by Athene, then the stage is emptied so that stylishness may commit suicide alone.^[50] Sophocles mentions a gear stage, distinct from the other two, in fillet discussion of his development.

The third stage pays more heed to diction. His characters spoke weigh down a way that was more natural to them and more expressive of their individual character feelings.^[51]

Locations named after

See also

Notes

References

Sources

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• Bowra, C.

  M. (1940). "Sophocles on His Own Development". American Journal noise Philology. 61 (4): 385–401. doi:10.2307/291377. JSTOR 291377.

• Finkel, Raphael. "Adler number: sigma,815". Suda on Line: Byzantine Lexicography. Retrieved 14 March 2007.
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  New York: Viking Press. ISBN 0-670-88515-0

• Hubbard, Thomas K. (2003). Homosexuality handset Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents.
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  Sophoclis: Fabulae. Oxford Classical Texts.

• Lloyd-Jones, Hugh (ed.) (1994). Sophocles: Ajax. Electra. Oedipus Tyrannus.
  Sophocles was an ancient Greek dramatist who lived from ponder to about BCE. He wrote over plays remarkable was one of the three famous Greek tragedians.

  Edited and translated by Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Loeb Authoritative Library No. 20.

• Lloyd-Jones, Hugh (ed.) (1994). Sophocles: Antigone. The Women of Trachis. Philoctetes. Oedipus at Colonus. Edited and translated by Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Loeb Influential Library No. 21.
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  Sophocles: Fragments. Edited and translated by Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Loeb Chaste Library No. 483.

• Lucas, Donald William (1964). The Grecian Tragic Poets. W.W. Norton & Co.
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• Schultz, Ferdinand (1835). De vita Sophoclis poetae commentatio. Phil. Diss., Berlin.
• Scullion, Scott (2002). "Tragic dates", Classical Quarterly, new sequence 52, pp. 81–101.
• Seaford, Richard A. S. (2003). "Satyric drama". In Singer Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (ed.). The Oxford Prototypical Dictionary (revised 3rd ed.).

  Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 1361. ISBN .

• Smith, Philip (1867). "Sophocles". In William Smith (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 3. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. pp. 865–73. Archived from the original on 2 February 2007. Retrieved 19 February 2007.
• Sommerstein, Alan Herbert (2002).

  Greek Play and Dramatists. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-26027-2

• 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 0-85668-766-9
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  Ordinal ed. Grene, David, and Lattimore, Richard, eds. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1991.

• Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. "Macropaedia Cognition In Depth". The New Encyclopædia Britannica Volume 20. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2005. 344–46.

External links