Sophocles

b. 496; d. 406 BC

Athenian tragic poet, born at Colonus. He excelled at an early age in both music and gymnastics, being chosen at the age of sixteen to lead the chorus at a victory celebration after Salamis (480). He won the tragic prize for the first time, with Triptolemus, in 468. In 440 he was one of the ten strategoi appointed to conduct the Samian war. A story is told that in his last years his son Iophon asked the court to declare Sophocles non compus mentis. By way of reply the aged dramatist read a passage from Oedipus Coloneus (which had been lately written but not yet produced) and the judges immediately dismissed the suit.

Sophocles made three notable innovations in the drama. (1) He raised the number of the chorus from 12 to 15 but gave it a less direct share in the action than hitherto. (2) He introduced a third actor. (3) He produced trilogies the members of which were unconnected in subject.

Only seven of his 123 plays are extant: Ajax (before 440), Antigone (440), Electra (between 440 and 412), Oedipus Tyrannus (c. 431), Trachiniae (between 420 and 415), Philoctetes (409), Oedipus Coloneus (posthumous, 401). Besides these we possess more than 1100 fragments, including 400 lines of the satyric drama Ichneutae found in a papyrus at Ozrhynchus in 1907.

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