Sophocles

  Sophocles was born in 496 BCE in Colonus, a village outside of Athens, Greece. Sophocles’s father, Sophillus, was a wealthy manufacturer of armor and arms, and Sophocles enjoyed a rather privileged childhood. He was afforded the absolute best of Greek education, and he was known as a young man for his supreme athletic ability and stunning good looks. In his early years, Sophocles was active in theater as an actor, and at age 16, he led the paean, or choral chant, to celebrate the Greek victory against the Persian Empire at the Battle of Salamis. Citing a weak voice, Sophocles left the acting scene and focused his energy exclusively on writing tragic plays and poems. At the center of Athenian life during Sophocles’s time was the Dionysia, a large festival in honor of Dionysius, the Greek god of theater. The festival was made up of two separate festivals, the Rural Dionysia and the City Dionysia, which were held at different times of the year. The Dionysia lasted for several days and culminated with the staging of several plays—three sets of three tragedies and a tragicomedy, as well as five comedies—with winners selected by a panel of judges in the categories of tragedy and comedy. Sophocles won his first Dionysian festival in 468, and while that play has been lost to antiquity, it is known that Sophocles beat out his famous contemporary, Aeschylus, to take first place. Sophocles is thought to have competed in at least 30 Dionysian festivals, in which he won first place 24 times and never came in below second. Sophocles has more first place wins at Dionysian festivals than either of his renowned contemporaries, Aeschylus and Euripides. The best plays of the Dionysia were distributed to the public in printed form and were studied in Greek schools, and many of Sophocles’s plays made this illustrious list. Sophocles wrote at least 123 plays during his prolific career (although only seven have survived antiquity), including Antigone, Oedipus Rex, and Electra, but Philoctetes is one of the only Greek tragedies that can be firmly dated. Sophocles wrote and staged Philoctetes in 409, winning the City Dionysia, when he was almost 90 years old. Sophocles’s success at the festivals made him extremely popular, and he was elected to several public offices throughout this lifetime, including the treasurer of Athens in 442 BCE, and stratēgoi, a type of high-level military commander, in 440. It is thought that Sophocles was elected twice more as stratēgoi after 440. Sophocles was also a priest in the hero cult of Halon and was a highly respected member of Athenian society. He died around 406 BCE in Athens at the age of 92.