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[FONT=Arial Black]He lived in the most brilliant intellectual periods of Athens. The work of Sophocles is considered the very perfection of tragedy. His arguably the best ancient and modern day tragedian writer ever to grace the pages of time.
Sophocles' date of birth is variously given, within narrow limits, the likeliest are either 497 BC or 496 BC. The date of his death is more secure: 406 BC or 405 BC. Sophocles' was born in Colonus, Greece, just north west of Athens. His father, Sophillus (or sometimes Sophilos), was a wealthy Athenian citizen and gave his son a proper education in gymnastics, music, and dancing. Sophocles was well known as having a reputation for learning and for his extravacant love for the arts. He won many awards in both wrestling and music, and was said to be graceful and handsome. At age sixteen he was choosen to lead the chorus of naked boys (Paean) at the Athenian celebration of the victory against the Persians at the battle of Salamis in 480 BC.
At the age of twenty-eight, Sophocles entered a dramatic contest called, the Festival of Dionysus, where each submission by one author consisted of four plays. He entered with his play, The Triptolemos which tookfirst place, defeating Aeschylus. Aeschylus and Sophoclesare two of the great tragedians, Euripides being the third. Chronologically Sophocles was the second of the three great tragedians, ans was in continuous competition with them both. Sophocles was several decades younger than Aeschylus and a decade or so older than Euripides He won more first place prizes (around twenty) than any other playwright, and there is no known record of him receiving anything lower then second place. Many scholars, including Aristotle, considered Sophocles to be the greatest playwright in Ancient Greek theatre.
The first abnormality in Sophocles' life is the shear length of it. If modern historians are correct -and they do generally agree at this point- is that Sophocles lived to be ninety years- old! That's twenty years older then the life expectancy of a U.S. male citizen today. These ninety years are proven to be crucial to the history of Athens, Greece, and the world in general. Sophocles was an ancient greek playwright, dramatist, priest, Director of Treasury, controlling the funds of the association of the states known as the Delian Confederacy, and politician of Athens. He held public office several times in his life partly due to his fame as a dramatist and his gentle qualities as a man. "In 440 BC he was appointed one of the generals in the war which Pericles led against Samos, and in 413 BC. (Magill, Koher p# 1023) He was also one of the ten commissioners appointed after the failure of the expedition to Sicily, to govern Athens. Pericles once said to him, "you know how to write poetry, but you certainly don't know how to command an army." (internet)
The most intriguing playwright of Ancient Greece. Sophocles has long been labeled as the "psychological playwright" (of the three: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides). This title is doubtful because it could argaubly accomodate anyone of the three tragedians, but it does work well when distinguishing Sophocles from the one who would precede him. Aeschylus' plays are more plotorientated and insisted upon socio-political values, Sophocles' plays questioned them and the individual's place in them. Both tragedians wrote plays raising serious moral and ethical questions, but Sophocles' plays included more "open-ended" resolutions whereas Aeschylus' plays seemed to supply "the correct answer" to a given dilemma. out of the three tragedians, Sophocles made the most improvements: he added scene painting, he added the third character, increased the number of chorus members from twelve to fifteen, reduced the proportion of the play given to the chorus, thereby accelerating the progress of the action; he also made better tragic masks and many other technical improvements. Sophocles is considered a grandmaster in the depiction of his characters, and is also credited with the invention of the heroic maiden and the ingenious young man.
These next weel known words were written by Sophocles, as a poet;
"The long days store up many things nearer to grief than joy.
...Death at last, the deliverer,
Not to be born is past all prizing best.
Next best by far when one has seen the light.
Is to go thither swiftly whence he came.
When youth and its light carelessness are past.
What woes are not without, what griefs within,
Envy and faction, strife and sudden death.
And last of all, old age despised,
Infirm,unfriended."
These words were not Sophocles' beliefs. They were written when he was full of grief in age, miserable and worthless. It is a record of his life; his youth in the bright day of Athens 'hope; his manhood when war and social assembly conflicts lead an assault upon the city; and his old age when the enemy of beauty, tolerance, and fair living, all that Athens had stood for, was defeated by time. An old man summing up his life after all the taste of his life and all the reasons for it, too, were gone, this was not the great poet's final judgement. He gave this judgement in no uncertain words. In the time that he lived the tempers of men were tested. The weaker spirits would only bring despair of all things. But to men like Sophocles outside change does not bring the loss of change on the inside. The strong shall be able to keep the passing and the everlasting seperate. Sophocles lost all hope for the city he had loved; to him only evil had come instead of the good; but as he saw life, an outside change was overall powerless; within himself, he knew no man would be helpless. There is an inner fortress where we may be able to rule our own spirits; to live as we are intended; free; to die witout disgracing society and humanity as a whole. We have the ultimate decision wether to live nobly or to die nobly. Antigone goes to her death knowing death was her choice, and she dies, the chorus refers to her as "mistress of her own fate." Sophocles saw life to be hard but he knew that he would be able to endure its challenges.
While only seven of Sophocles' plays exist today: Antigone, Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus at Colonus, Ajax, Philoctetes, The Trachiniae, and Electra, he is believed to have authored somewhere between eighty and one hundered twenty-three plays. Sophocles died while, during or after, depending on who you ask- composing his final existing play: Oedipus at Colonus. He joined Aeschylus who had long since gone to his grave and Euripides who had passed on a few months earlier. Thus the first great age of tragedy came to an end.
