Sophocle
Athenian tragic poet: his plays (Antigone, Oedipus the King) stage the limits of the human condition.
Life
Sophocles (about 496-406 BC), an Athenian tragic poet, was one of the three great tragedians of classical Greece. He wrote over a hundred plays, seven of which survive complete. Antigone and Oedipus the King stage questions philosophy would take up: human law against a higher law, fate and responsibility, the limits of knowledge.
Main works
Antigone buries her brother despite Creon's ban: the city's law against unwritten laws (approximate date).
Oedipus investigates a crime and finds he is its author: fate, knowledge and responsibility (approximate date).
His last play, staged after his death: the end of Oedipus, old and blind.
In his own words
« It is not my nature to join in hate, but in love. »
οὔτοι συνέχθειν, ἀλλὰ συμφιλεῖν ἔφυν.
Positions
click a row to see the evidenceHis plays show the gods' will as real and binding, and punish those who ignore it, as Creon and Oedipus learn.
Sophocles, Oedipus the King (c. 429 BC); Antigone (c. 441 BC)
In Antigone, the heroine invokes unwritten, unfailing laws of the gods above a king's decree, and the play sides with her.
Sophocles, Antigone (c. 441 BC), l. 450-470