ABSTRACT
Most likely, Sophocles was born in 494 bc. He played a role in public affairs, being elected to office in 441, in the aftermath, so they say, of the political impact of his Antigone.1 He died when he was 90, witnessing the establishment of democracy by Pericles and Ephialtes. As John Ferguson puts it, “war, which is in the foreground for Aeschylus, a generation older, and for Euripides, half a generation younger, is for Sophocles only a background.”2 Of Sophocles’ works only some have survived; among them, Ajax, The Trachiniae, Electra, Philoctetes, and the most celebrated “Theban plays”: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone.
