Sophocles: A Guide to Selected Sources

Sarah Burges Watson Highlight sources in the text

Best-loved of the tragedians, Sophocles won at least twenty times in the Athenian dramatic festivals. He died in 406/5 BCE, aged around ninety. He wrote over a hundred and twenty plays (Suda Suda, s.v. Sophocles); seven survive complete: Ajax, Electra, Women of Trachis, Antigone, Oedipus Tyrannus, Philoctetes (409 BCE), Oedipus at Colonus (401 BCE). The Vita Life of Sophocles transmitted with his plays is probably Hellenistic (see Bing 1993), but biographical stories circulated during Sophocles’ lifetime. Sources on Sophocles are collected by Radt (1977).

If classicism is the product of nostalgia for an idealized past (see Porter 2006), Sophocles represents its acme. His Life is perfectly harmonized with his poetry (cf. Graziosi 2006: 160-5). Considered through the lens of Sophocles’ mighty champion Aristotle, it might actually qualify as blessed (Nicomachean Ethics 1.10), apparently combining virtuous activity in accordance with reason (both contemplative and politically oriented) with good fortune—and no reversals. It certainly exemplifies the good timing said to be characteristic of his dramas (Vita Life of Sophocles 20-1). Raised in prosperity, Sophocles receives an aristocratic education in gymnastics and mousikê and sings the paean after the victory at Salamis (Vita Life of Sophocles 3). His career coincides with Athens’ heyday, ending before her catastrophic defeat by Sparta. He influences and is influenced by luminaries like Herodotus (see Dewald/Marincola 2006), whom he celebrates in an epigram TO ADD. Taking what is best from Aeschylus, he brings tragedy to what Aristotle considers its natural fulfillment. Thereafter, Sophocles represents the golden mean between his rivals, Aeschylus and Euripides (see Hunter 2009).

Whilst Euripides subverts traditional religion and Aeschylus is accused of profaning the mysteries (see Guide to Aeschylus), Sophocles is ‘more pious than anyone else’ (Vita Life of Sophocles 12, 16; see Jouanna 2007: 73-90). He enjoys reciprocal divine favour and possesses vatic authority (Vita Life of Sophocles 12, 15, 17). When Heracles’ shrine is robbed, the hero reveals the thief’s identity to Sophocles in a dream (Vita Life of Sophocles 11, cf. Cicero TO ADD), as he reveals Philoctetes’ destiny in Sophocles’ tragedy. The Vita Life of Sophocles (11) says that Sophocles was priest of a healer-hero, Halon. Some suspect confusion with Amynus, attested in inscriptions TO ADD with Asclepius and ‘Dexion’—Sophocles’ cult-name in a Byzantine lexicon TO ADD. Supposedly derived from his ‘reception’ (dexis) of Asclepius (cf. Plutarch TO ADD
TO ADD, Lefkowitz 2012, Connolly 1998), the name may pun on his poetic dexterity TO ADD
TO ADD. A Sophoclean paean to Asclepius (Page, PMG 737) was still performed in Athens in Philostratus’ TO ADD day.

The tragic poet dies a Dionysian death (Vita Life of Sophocles 14) by choking on an unripe grape during the Dionysian festival Anthesteria; or from joy at the Antigone’s victory (cf. Diodorus TO ADD); or because he ran out of breath whilst reciting a long passage (an anecdote which may have arisen in a didactic context). Dionysus prescribes burial honours for ‘the new Siren’ Life of Sophocles (ch. 15)
TO ADD. Pausanias understands the title as a reference to the seductiveness of (his) poetry. Sophocles is made a hero (Vita Life of Sophocles 17), perhaps in imitation of his (posthumous) Oedipus at Colonus—Sophocles’ own deme. (See Lefkowitz 2012: 84 and Currie 2012, with further bibliography). His canon-/hero-ization is already underway in 405 BCE in Phrynichus’ Muses TO ADD (Harvey 2000) and Aristophanes’ Frogs TO ADD
TO ADD
TO ADD. In the latter, Sophocles floats peacefully above his quarrelsome rivals, surrendering life and the infernal Chair of Tragedy as graciously as he surrenders the sexual pleasures of his youth in Plato TO ADD.

The charm (charis) of Sophocles personality matches the charis of his poetry (Vita Life of Sophocles 7). His Life exemplifies his declaration (in Aristotle’s Poetics TO ADD
TO ADD) that he (like Homer), depicted men as they should be (the proper mode for tragedy); Euripides as they are. Aristophanes’ flattering portrait may reflect Sophocles’ tribute to Euripides TO ADD, who died in the same year. The tragedian seems never to have missed an opportunity to display his excellence. He is the antitype of the antisocial Euripides (see Guide to Euripides, Davidson 2012). Athenaeus TO ADD constructs their sexualities as opposite: Euripides is a woman-lover; Sophocles likes boys. Elsewhere TO ADD
TO ADD
TO ADD, however, Sophocles pursues women even in old age (pace Plato). He falls for a courtesan and leaves her his property Life of Sophocles
TO ADD
TO ADD. The Vita says that his son/s charged him with dementia and that Sophocles was acquitted after reading from the OC; a story found in other sources Life of Sophocles (ch. 13)
TO ADD
TO ADD.

Anecdotes involving (the conspicuously un-erotic) Aeschylus are restricted to poetics. Sophocles Ath. 10. 428f
Plut. fr. 130 Sandbach comments in Socratic fashion on the older poet’s instinctive creativity (see Guide to Aeschylus) and, in Plutarch Plutarch, How a young man may become aware of his progress in virtue 7, 79B, charts his relationship to Aeschylus in teleological terms (see Pelling 2007). Aeschylus is said to have left Athens in indignation Life of Aeschylus (ch. 8)
Plut. Cim. 8, 483e when defeated by Sophocles’ first production.

While his rivals’ biographies end in exile, Sophocles is ‘most Athens-loving’ (Vita 10; see Hanink 2010). Indeed, after serving as treasurer in 443/22, he held the highest political office (general)3 at least once—with Pericles—during the Samian revolt of 441/0 BCE. According to the Antigone’s hypothesis,4 Sophocles was elected because of the play’s popularity (the dating conflicts with Vita5 14). In an anecdote ascribed to Ion of Chios6, Sophocles playfully challenges Pericles’ observation that he is a better poet than general by ensnaring a slave-boy at a symposium (see Ford 2002: 191-3). This follows a virtuosic erotic/poetic display which, when challenged by a pedantic symposiast, becomes another demonstration of ‘how men should be’. Dexterity in mousikê is crucial for elite social competition, but Ion judges Sophocles politically unremarkable. In the Frogs, where questions about poetry’s educational status are central, Sophocles’ absence from the fray exonerates Aristophanes from exploring how good the poet’s advice to the people actually was, at least when he left the theater. This subject was perhaps best avoided, since a committee on which Sophocles served had established a (despotic) oligarchic regime in 411 BCE. As Aristotle7 attests, Sophocles was questioned about his role by his fellow-counsellor Peisander, probably during the latter’s prosecution for a suicide, for which Sophocles proposed the death penalty (see Jameson 1971).

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