Author: SOPHOCLES
Biography:
SOPHOCLES (496-406 BCE: OCD)
Of the three great Greek tragedians of the fifth century BCE, Sophocles was the longest lived, the most prolific, and the most popular in his own lifetime. He was born at Colonus, just outside Athens. His father Sophilus was a prosperous manufacturer of armour. Sophocles is said to have been a handsome and sociable man, but to have had to give up performing in his own plays because his voice was not strong enough. He had two sons, both also tragedians. His first victory in the competitions associated with festivals of Dionysus was in 468 against Aeschylus (q.v.), and his last production was in 406, when he is said to have dressed his actors and chorus in black to mark the recent death of Euripides (q.v.). He wrote more than 120 plays of which seven complete tragedies were preserved, first printed in 1502. In midlife he was entrusted with civic responsibilities as a Treasurer of the Greeks, a general, and a political adviser; he died in Athens and was later worshipped as a hero. Aristotle took his Oedipus Rex as the model for tragedy in his Poetics. Four of the English translators concerned with the works listed here have headnotes of their own: Robert Potter, Thomas Maurice, Thomas Dale, and William Drennan. One is a prior author, Thomas Francklin, D.D. (1721-84), who published his versions of all the plays in 1758-9. George Croker Fox (1785-1850) is identified in the headnote to Aeschylus. (OCD 12 Mar. 2025; Harvey; A. Grafton et al., eds. The Classical Tradition [2010]) HJ