Sophocles (c.496–c.406 BCE) was a Greek tragic dramatist. He is one of the trios of major Greek tragedians, with Aeschylus and Euripides.
Sophocles was very much at the center of Athenian public life; he served as an imperial treasurer and diplomat and was elected general twice. Sophocles’ long life embraced the most crucial epoch of Athenian history—from the defeat of the foreign threats in the Persian wars, through the ensuing economic and cultural expansion, to the years of decline. He died just ahead of the final defeat of Athens by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War.
Sophocles wrote 120 plays, of which seven survive, including Ajax, The Women of Trachis, Electra, and Philoctetes . The group known as the Theban plays—(Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone) have long been influential in English literature, either directly or in adaptations by Seneca, John Dryden, Nathaniel Lee, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Matthew Arnold, A. C. Swinburne, W. B. Yeats, and Ezra Pound.
Sophocles’ seven surviving plays are significant for their addition of a third actor to the previous two (plus the chorus.) This allowed a better complexity of plot and a much fuller depiction of the characters’ personalities.
At their essence, Sophocles’ tragedies are moral and religious dramas that pit the tragic hero against unalterable fate and the divine will of the gods. Human strength and achievement must be balanced by susceptibility to circumstance.
In his masterpiece Oedipus Rex, arguably the most influential play ever written, Oedipus is the model leader whose strengths and human fallibility set in motion the revelation that he has violated social and divine order through patricide and incest. The play dramatizes Oedipus’s heartbreaking journey toward self-understanding-exposing human nature and its implications.
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Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.
—Sophocles
Topics: Character, Success, Failure, Honesty, Honor
A trifle is often pregnant with high importance; the prudent man neglects no circumstance.
—Sophocles
Topics: Life
Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.
—Sophocles
Topics: Wisdom
There is no witness so terrible and no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us.
—Sophocles
Topics: Conscience
Heaven ne’er helps the man who will not act.
—Sophocles
Topics: Action, Acting, Heaven, Prayer
But whoever gives birth to useless children, what would you say of him except that he has bred sorrows for himself, and furnishes laughter for his enemies.
—Sophocles
Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.
—Sophocles
In darkness one may be ashamed of what one does, without the shame of disgrace.
—Sophocles
It is a painful thing to look at your own trouble and know that you yourself, and no one else, has made it.
—Sophocles
Topics: Responsibility, Confidence, Self-reliance
Not to be born is, past all prizing, best.
—Sophocles
If i am young and wrong, then you are right. But if i am young, and right. What does my age matter?
—Sophocles
There’s nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.
—Sophocles
One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life; that word is love.
—Sophocles
Topics: Love, Romance
The long unmeasured pulse of time moves everything. There is nothing hidden that it cannot bring to light, nothing once known that may not become unknown.
—Sophocles
Topics: Knowledge
To throw away an honest friend is, as it were, to throw your life away.
—Sophocles
Topics: Friendship
A man, though wise, should never be ashamed of learning more, and must unbend his mind.
—Sophocles
Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man; the power that crosses the white sea, driven by the stormy wind, making a path under surges that threaten to engulf him…
—Sophocles
Topics: Knowledge
Success is dependent on effort.
—Sophocles
Topics: Effort, Success
I well believe it, to unwilling ears;None love the messenger who brings bad news.
—Sophocles
Topics: News
Men of ill judgment often ignore the good that lies within their hands, till they have lost it.
—Sophocles
Topics: Judgment
Best to live lightly, unthinkingly.
—Sophocles
Topics: Happiness, Life and Living
Rather throw away that which is dearest to you, your own life, than turn away a good friend.
—Sophocles
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Euripides Ancient Greek Dramatist
- Heraclitus Ancient Greek Philosopher
- Xenocrates Ancient Greek Philosopher
- Homer Ancient Greek Poet
- Plotinus Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mystic
- Aristotle Ancient Greek Philosopher
- Plato Ancient Greek Philosopher
- Epicurus Greek Philosopher
- Plutarch Greek Biographer
- Epictetus Ancient Greek Philosopher