Life and works

Sophocles, son of Sophillus, was a native of the village of Colonus, then about 2 km north of Athens, and was born about 497/6 BC. He won his first victory at the City Dionysia in 468, possibly at the first attempt. There is some evidence that early in his career he was patronized by the statesman Cimon, but Cimon was ostracized in 461 and in later life Sophocles appears to have enjoyed reasonably good relations with Cimon’s opponent Pericles, under whose supremacy he held high office at least twice (as a treasurer of the Athenian Alliance in 443/2, and as a general in 441/0) – though a contemporary who knew him personally, Ion of Chios,7 thought that he had no great political ability, and quoted Sophocles himself as saying that Pericles did not think him fit to be a general. Originally, like Aeschylus, Sophocles acted in his own plays, but he is said to have given up doing so because he had a weak voice. Our sources associate Sophocles’ name with various other developments in theatrical practice that took place in the 460s and 450s (the third actor, painted scenery, the increase in the chorus from twelve to fifteen, the general abandonment of the tetralogy form). After Aeschylus’ death Sophocles dominated the Athenian tragic stage for half a century, winning eighteen first prizes at the City Dionysia and probably a further six at the Lenaea. He clearly came to be regarded as one of the great and wise men of Athens, and at the age of eighty-three he was elected as one of the ten probouloi who formed an emergency supervisory policy board after the Sicilian disaster of 413; he therefore shared some of the responsibility for the takeover of power by the Four Hundred two years later, but this does not seem to have damaged his popularity (he was victorious at the very first City Dionysia after the restoration of full democracy). Like Aeschylus and Euripides, he was invited by foreign rulers to visit their courts, but he never accepted any of these invitations. He died, aged ninety or ninetyone, in the winter of 406/5. At the Lenaea a month or two later, both Aristophanes (in Frogs) and Phrynichus (in The Muses) inserted warm compliments to him into their comedies. Putting these together with Ion’s account of his geniality and wit in the symposiac circle, one can well believe the assertion of his ancient biographer that ‘in his character there was so much charm that he was loved everywhere and by everyone’. Of Sophocles’ five sons, one (Iophon) was himself a tragic poet; another

became a prolific and successful dramatist on his own account. At some time Sophocles had written a paean for the god Asclepius, and it was later believed that he had given Asclepius hospitality when the god was introduced to Athens in 420/19 and that, partly for this service, Sophocles himself was later worshipped as a hero under the name Dexion; the first part of this story is known to be false, and the second is not much more probable.