SOPHOKLES

Sophokles, author of 123-5 plays including the incomparable Oedipus Rex, was talented, well-placed, handsome, gracious, good tempered, civic-minded, pious, and, of course, a brilliant writer. He was the favorite of his and the succeeding age. He was, in short, the quintessential "happy man of Hellas."

Born around 496 B.C.E. into the family of a wealthy merchant (some say an armorer) in the village of White Colonus a mile northwest of Athens, Sophokles' life parallels the Golden Age of Greece. As a boy, he witnesses the Persian invasion of Greece and their subsequent defeat by a small force of Greeks at Marathon. He watched Pericles establish the great Greek empire. But by the time of his death in 406, Athens was in decline and a scant two years after his death, Greek Democracy and the Golden Age were over.

Much of what we know of Sophokles' life comes from an anonymous second century biography, so some of the details may well be spurious, but the descriptions of his life probably reflect what his own age wanted to believe of him. Surely they have the truth of heroic myth about them.At sixteen he was selected as exarchos to lead the victory dance in celebration of the defeat of thePersians at Salamis. (This is the defeat that resulted in the establishment of the Delian League.) Third Century C. E. Athenaeus describes him as ephebos in his Deipnosophistai:

Sophokles, besides being handsome in his youth, became proficient in dancing and music, while still a lad, under the instruction of Lamprus. After the battle of Salamis, at any rate, he danced to the accompaniment of his lyre round the trophy, naked and anointed with oil. Others say he danced with his cloak on. And when he brought out the Thamyria, he played the lyre himself. He also played ball with great skill when he produced the Nausicaa.

Sophokles was renowned for his social graces. A typical gesture was having his own khoros come onstage dressed in mourning after he heard of his rival Euripides' death. The historian Herodotus was a close personal friend and, even the contentious Sokrates has a warm mention of hearing the poet speak in his old age. Aristophanes, who was not afraid to lampoon anyone worthy of such treatment, had Dionysos say of him in Frogs the year after Sophokles death, that.he would no doubt be good-tempered (some translate it as "easy-going") in Hades as he was on earth.

Sophokles held high civil and military offices. He was treasurer of the Athenian Naval League, and even served as a general under Pericles during the revolt at Samos. While that revolt was successfully put down, Perikles was to tease Sophokles later that he was a better poet than a general. Several times, he was appointed the Athenian ambassador to various foreign states and was likely a member of the committee that was appointed to guide Athens after the disaster in Sicily.

He was a religious man, even becoming a priest of Halon, a minor god of healing and medicine. There is a legend that when the worship of Asclepius was introduced into Athens, Sophokles received the god in the form of a sacred snake into his home because Asclepius' shrine had not been completed. That's piety of a high order.

Of his personal life, we know with certainty only that he had two sons: Iophon, his legitimate son, who went on to become a poet of some distinction, and Ariston, a bastard about whom we know next to nothing. When Sophokles was very old, his son unjustly accused him of incompetence, and he was obliged to defend himself before the judges of Athens. He did so by reading the section praising Athens in his latest (and last) masterpiece, Oedipus at Colonus. He was acquitted of the charge of incompetence.

He first competed at the City Dionysia in 471 and won his first victory over Aeschylus in 468. He won his first victory over Euripides in 438. In all he won twenty-four victories and never placed lower than second place, a remarkable achievement especially in light of the method of choosing the winners.

Of the 123-5 plays whose titles survive, we have only seven extant:
Aias,
Antigone,
Oedipus Tyrannos,
Trachinae (The Maidens of Trachis),
Elektra,
Philoktetes,
Oedipus at Colonus.
There is also a major fragment of a satyr play, The Searching Satyrs.

Sophokles is credited with a number of innovations:

1] According to Dicaearchus of Messina, he introduced the third actor.
2] Some say he introduced skenographia or scene painting.
3] He may have decreased the importance of the khoros and set the number for tragedies at 15.
4] Some claim that he abandoned the trilogy form making each play a separate unit, though in my view, there is insufficient evidence to make such a claim.
5] He developed the definite structure that came to define tragedy: