Greek Drama - Sophocles

Athenian glory. The second actor. Oedipus.

Sophocles' (496-406 B.C.) life coincides with the greatest period of Athenian glory. Athens had defeated Persia as he began writng. He was rich, handsome, and popular. He held high offices. He died before the fall of Athens at the end of the Peloponnnesian War.

Sophocles' view of life was very somber. For him, it was better for man not to have been born. In most of his plays, one self-willed character "marches steadfastly on his course to his ultimate destruction, achieving thereby a heroism which enriches lesser people but of which lesser people are themselves incapable. The greater the hero, the more he is exposed to the forces beyond his control; it is his own heroism which gives dignity and meaning to the precariousness of life." ( from Moses Hadas in an introduction to Greek Drama, Bantam, 1962, now out of print)

Sophocles' trilogies are unconnected, unlike Aeschylus'. He is creditred with introducing the third actor, "which multiplied opportunites for intrigue." (Hadas) He also introduced scene painting.

There are seven plays (of over a hundred) which have come down to us are Oedipus Rex, who persists at discovering his own uninentional guilt, Antigone, who dies because she has disregarded the king's edict against burying her brother,Oedipus at Colonus, which recounts the death and transfiguration of the aged hero.