Sophocles

Sophocles wrote about 120 plays, of which seven survive, and won more dramatic competitions than any other Athenian. Born at Colonus near Athens around 496 BC to a wealthy armour manufacturer, he led the boys' chorus celebrating the victory at Salamis in 480 BC. He first competed in 468 BC and beat Aeschylus, then the established master. He is recorded as winning eighteen or twenty-four times and never placing third. He made three technical changes that shaped drama. He added a third actor, which allowed genuine three-way exchanges rather than confrontation between two figures and a chorus. He enlarged the chorus from twelve to fifteen while reducing its share of the action, so the drama moved to the characters. And he abandoned the connected trilogy, making each play a self-contained work. Oedipus Tyrannus is the play Aristotle used to define tragedy: a man of standing brought down not by wickedness but by an error, discovering through his own investigation that he is the murderer he seeks and that the prophecy he fled has been fulfilled. Its plot is constructed so that every attempt to escape brings the outcome closer. Antigone sets the claims of family and divine law against those of the state, and has been staged as political argument continuously since. He also wrote Electra, Ajax, the Trachiniae, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus, the last completed in his nineties. He held public office, serving as a treasurer of the Delian League and as one of the ten generals with Pericles. He died in 406 BC.

• Lived: 497 BCE – 406 BCE
• Nationality: Greek
• Roles: writer, painter