A life more ,satisfactory than Sophocles' if difficult to imag ine. Its timing, first of a11, could not be more propitious, for his lifespan coincided precisely with the Golden Age of Athenian intellectual, artistic, and political glory. He was born in 496 B.c., and so was maturity at the time of file great victory over the Pendan, at Salamis (48O BC.) which initiated the era of Athenian preeminence, and died in 406, two years before Athens fell to the Spsrtzm. On his youth we are informed by a single but revealing passage Athenaeus (1.20 ef):Sophocles,besides being handsome in his youth,became proficient in dancing and music,while still a lad,under the instruction of Lampus. ...

The greatest of the Greek tragedians, Sophocles wrote  over 120 plays, surpassing his older contemporary Aeschylus and the younger Euripides not only in the number of plays he wrote but also in the number of prizes awarded his works. Only the seven works in this volume have survived intact. From the complex drama of Antigone, the heroine willing to sacrifice life and love for a principle, to the mythic doom embodied by Oedipus, the uncommonly good man brought down by the gods, Sophocles possessed a tragic vision that, in Matthew Arnold"s phrase, saw life steadily and saw it whole.

Introduction

Ajax

Electra

Oedipus the King

Antigone

Trachinian Women

Philoctetes

Oedipus at Colonus