Anatine
Sophocles Profile

Sophocles
Keynotes

  Born:  Colonus, near Athens, 496 BC.

  Died:  Athens, 406 BC.

  One of the three great writers of tragedy in classical Greece, along with Aeschylus and Euripides, Sophocles changed the traditional form of drama by introducing a third actor.

  Sophocles was born in 496 BC into a wealthy family in Colonus, a village just outside Athens.  The Athenian democratic constitution had been introduced just a few years earlier in 508 BC.

  In 442 BC he was one of the treasurers handling tribute money from 300 subject states of the Athenian Empire.

  In 440 BC he was elected a general, and was involved in co-ordinating the Peloponnesian War (431 - 404).

  Around 441 BC, while acting as a priest for a religious society honouring a minor god of healing, he kept a snake, sacred to the divine physician Asclepius, in his house whilst a temple was being built to home it.

  In 413 BC, at the age of 83, he was an advisory commissioner and helped to organise the financial recovery of Athens following the military defeat at Syracuse.

  Sophocles wrote 123 dramas of which only seven survive.

Works with approximate dates:

Ajax  (probably before 441 BC)
Antigone  (441 BC)
Oedipus Tyrannus  (after 430 BC)
The Trachiniae  (c. 430 BC)
Electra  (between 418 and 410 BC)
Philoctetes  (408 BC)
Oedipus Coloneus  (produced posthumously in 401 BC)

Links

Great Books Index - Sophocles
http://books.mirror.org/gb.sophocles.html

MSN Encarta - Sophocles
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/
refarticle.aspx?refid=761554045

Monologue Archive - Monologues by Sophocles
http://www.monologuearchive.com/s/
sophocles.html

Moonstruck - Sophocles
http://www.imagi-nation.com/
moonstruck/clsc1.htm

Theatre Database - Sophocles
http://www.theatredatabase.com/ancient/
sophocles_001.html

The Millennium Library - Sophocles
http://www.millenniumlibrary.co.uk/millib/
reference/notes.php?entry=Sophocles&fromdb=2

Sophocles - a biograhpy
http://www.kat.gr/kat/history/Greek/Tr/Sophocles.htm

Ancient Earth - Intro to Sophocles
http://home.nycap.rr.com/foxmob/soph_bio.htm

A selection of books by Sophocles available from W.H. Smith:
 

Antigone  (paperback)

Antigone  (hardback)

Oedipus Tyrannus  (paperback)

Philoctetes  (paperback)

Electra  (paperback)

Trachiniae  (paperback)

Theban Plays: King Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone  (paperback)

Electra and Other Plays: Ajax; Women of Trachic; Philoctetes  (paperback)

Oedipus Plays  (paperback)

Sophocles: "Antigone, Oedipus the King" A Companion to the Penguin Translation  (paperback)