Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: What years did Sophocles live?
Sophocles (/ˈsɒfəkliːz/;[1] Greek: Σοφοκλῆς Sophoklēs, pronounced[so.pʰo.klɛ̂ːs]; c. 497/6 – winter 406/5 BC)[2] is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than or contemporary with those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides. Sophocles wrote over 120 plays[3] during the course of his life, but only seven have survived in a complete form: Ajax, Antigone, Women of Trachis, Oedipus Rex, Electra, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus.[4] For almost 50 years, Sophocles was the most celebrated playwright in the dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens that took place during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and the Dionysia. He competed in 30 competitions, won 24, and was never judged lower than second place. Aeschylus won 13 competitions, and was sometimes defeated by Sophocles, while Euripides won four competitions.[5]
Sophocles was a very influential and highly admired Athenian playwright who died after the play had already been written, during the first phase of its production. Aristophanes did not have enough time to rewrite the play with Sophocles in it, so he simply added in scattered references to Sophocles's recent death, referring to him as a worthy playwright. When Aeschylus leaves the underworld at the end of the play, Sophocles takes his throne.
Sophocles, the son of Sophilus, was a wealthy member of the rural deme (small community) of Hippeios Colonus in Attica, which was to become a setting for one of his plays, and he was probably born there.[2][7] Sophocles was born a few years before the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC: the exact year is unclear, although 497/6 is the most likely.[2][8] Sophocles was born into a wealthy family (his father was an armour manufacturer) and was highly educated. Sophocles' first artistic triumph was in 468 BC, when he took first prize in the Dionysia theatre competition over the reigning master of Athenian drama, Aeschylus.[2][9] According to Plutarch, the victory came under unusual circumstances. Instead of following the usual custom of choosing judges by lot, the archon asked Cimon and the other strategoi present to decide the victor of the contest. Plutarch further contends that following this loss Aeschylus soon left for Sicily.[10] Although Plutarch says that this was Sophocles' first production, it is now thought that his first production was probably in 470 BC.[7] Triptolemus was probably one of the plays that Sophocles presented at this festival.[7]
The concept of having a moral high ground is a key aspect in this play. The play makes the spectator question what morality means to each man. Furthermore, the play makes one question the struggle between what is right for the individual versus what is right for the group. It is possible that this struggle is irreconcilable. More specifically, one can see this struggle by looking at what has happened to Philoctetes versus what the Greeks need.
Seven works of Sophocles have survived, the most acclaimed of which are the three Theban plays, which center around the story of Oedipus and his offspring. The Theban Trilogy consists of "Oedipus the King", "Oedipus at Colonus", and "Antigone". Although the plays are often called a "trilogy," they were actually written many years apart. "Antigone", the last of the three plays sequentially, was actually first to be written, having been composed in 441 BC, towards the beginning of Sophocles's career. "Oedipus the King", the most famous of the three, was written around 429 BC at the midpoint of Sophocles's career. "Oedipus at Colonus", the second of the three plays chronologically, was actually Sophocles's last play and was performed in 401 BC, after Sophocles's death.
Among Sophocles' earliest innovations was the addition of a third actor, which further reduced the role of the chorus and created greater opportunity for character development and conflict between characters.[6] Aeschylus, who dominated Athenian playwriting during Sophocles' early career, followed suit and adopted the third character into his own work towards the end of his life.[6] Aristotle credits Sophocles with the introduction of skenographia, or scenery-painting. It was not until after the death of the old master Aeschylus in 456 BC that Sophocles became the pre-eminent playwright in Athens.[2]
The story of Philomela, Procne and Tereus is largely influenced by the lost tragedy "Tereus" of Sophocles. Scholar Jenny Marsh claims that Sophocles borrowed certain plot elements from Euripides drama "Medea"—notably a wife killing her child in an act of revenge against her husband—and incorporated them in his tragedy "Tereus". She implies that the infanticide of Itys did not appear in the Tereus myth until Sophocles' play and that it was introduced because of what was borrowed from Euripides.
Sophocles had the option of making the oracle to Laius conditional ("if" Laius has a son, that son will kill him) or unconditional (Laius "will" have a son who will kill him). Both Aeschylus and Euripides write plays in which the oracle is conditional; Sophocles ... chooses to make Laius's oracle unconditional and thus removes culpability for his sins
from Oedipus, for he could not have done other than what he did, no matter what action he took.
Estimates indicate she may have earned at least US$200,000 per year. She said that she was "just trying to make a living like everyone else." Betterly publicly attacked those who were critical of her practices, “I have a beef against what I consider hate groups that are trying to shut down commercial e-mail” and referred to what she did as "a win-win situation". To those who objected to what she did for a living she said, "I don't really care. As long as I'm not breaking any laws, you don't have to love me or like what I do for a living."
Library resources about Sophocles By Sophocles
Sophocles Sophocleous (born 7 August 1962) is a Cypriot Movement for Social Democracy politician. He sat as a Member of the European Parliament for Cyprus between 2012 and 2014. He was the Cypriot Minister of Justice and Public Order from 2006 to 2008.
Extant plays by Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides on the tale of Orestes and Electra do not include her as a character. This is consistent with the theory that she and Iphigeneia are one and the same. On the other hand, Sophocles does mention her, and hints that she lives in the palace of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, together with Electra and Chrysothemis.
The fable was well known in Ancient Greece; Athenaeus records that Hieronymus of Rhodes, in his "Historical Notes", quoted an epigram of Sophocles against Euripides that parodied the story of Helios and Boreas. It related how Sophocles had his cloak stolen by a boy to whom he had made love. Euripides joked that he had had that boy too, and it did not cost him anything. Sophocles' reply satirises the adulteries of Euripides:
"It was the Sun, and not a boy, whose heat stripped me naked;
as for you, Euripides, when you were kissing someone else's wife
the North Wind screwed "you". You are unwise, you who sow
in another's field, to accuse Eros of being a snatch-thief."
Thereafter, Sophocles emerged victorious in dramatic competitions at 18 Dionysia and 6 Lenaia festivals.[2] In addition to innovations in dramatic structure, Sophocles' work is also known for its deeper development of characters than earlier playwrights.[6] His reputation was such that foreign rulers invited him to attend their courts, although unlike Aeschylus who died in Sicily, or Euripides who spent time in Macedon, Sophocles never accepted any of these invitations.[2] Aristotle used Sophocles' Oedipus Rex in his Poetics (c. 335 BC) as an example of the highest achievement in tragedy, which suggests the high esteem in which his work was held by later Greeks.[20]
Sophocleous is a law graduate of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He was the mayor of Pano Lefkara, his hometown, from 1992 to 2006, and he was the vice-president of the Movement for Social Democracy from 2000 to 2012. He was appointed Minister of Justice and Public Order in 2006, and he stayed in post until Tassos Papadopoulos lost the Cypriot presidency at the 2008 presidential election. Sophocleous took the seat of Kyriakos Mavronikolas in the European Parliament following the latter's resignation in 2012.
Here Sophocles says that he has completed a stage of Aeschylus' work, meaning that he went through a phase of imitating Aeschylus' style but is finished with that. Sophocles' opinion of Aeschylus was mixed. He certainly respected him enough to imitate his work early on in his career, but he had reservations about Aeschylus' style,[33] and thus did not keep his imitation up. Sophocles' first stage, in which he imitated Aeschylus, is marked by "Aeschylean pomp in the language".[34] Sophocles' second stage was entirely his own. He introduced new ways of evoking feeling out of an audience, as in his Ajax, when Ajax is mocked by Athene, then the stage is emptied so that he may commit suicide alone.[35] Sophocles mentions a third stage, distinct from the other two, in his discussion of his development. The third stage pays more heed to diction. His characters spoke in a way that was more natural to them and more expressive of their individual character feelings.[36]
The Greeks did not consider the dead to be gods, but they did pay them homage, and give them sacrifices – using different rituals than those for the gods of Olympus. The Greeks called the extraordinary dead – founders of cities and the like – heroes; in the simplest form, hero cult was the burial and the memorials which any respectable Greek family gave their dead, but paid for by their City in perpetuity. Most heroes were the figures of ancient legend, but some were historical: the Athenians revered Harmodius and Aristogeiton as heroes, as saviours of Athens from tyranny; also, collectively, those who fell at the Battle of Marathon. Statesmen did not generally become heroes, but Sophocles was the hero Dexion ("the Receiver") – not as a playwright, nor a general, but because when the Athenians took Asclepius' cult during the Peloponnesian War, Sophocles housed an image of Asclepius until a shrine could be built. The Athenian leader Hagnon founded Amphipolis shortly before the Peloponnesian War; thirteen years later, while Hagnon was still alive, the Spartan general Brasidas liberated it from the Athenian empire, and was fatally wounded in the process. The Amphipolitans buried him as a hero, declaring him the second founder of the city, and erased Hagnon's honors as much as they could.
In Antigone, Sophocles asks the question, which law is greater: the gods' or man's. Sophocles votes for the law of the gods. He does this in order to save Athens from the moral destruction which seems imminent. Sophocles wants to warn his countrymen about hubris, or arrogance, because he believes this will be their downfall. In Antigone, the hubris of Creon is revealed.
Michael Sophocles was educated at the independent Highgate School in north London. He is a 22-year-old telesales executive. He has been the subject of some controversy, firstly for being a self-confessed "arrogant" person, and secondly, most notably, for claiming to be "a good Jewish boy" on his application to the show, but under closer questioning not knowing either the meaning of "kosher" or the common Hebrew toast "L'Chaim" (translated "to life" as per the "Fiddler on the Roof" song of that name). The ineptitude of Sophocles, who read classics and history at Edinburgh University, prompted Margaret Mountford (herself Cambridge-educated) to opine that "Edinburgh isn't what it used to be".
"What Katy Did" was followed by four sequels: "What Katy Did at School" in which Katy and Clover attend the fictional Hillsover School (set in Hanover, New Hampshire); "What Katy Did Next", in which a new friend of Katy's takes her on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Europe; "Clover", in which Katy is married and Clover accompanies her brother Phil to Colorado after he falls ill; and "In the High Valley", which shows the lives of a handful of young people living in the High Valley in Colorado, including Clover, Elsie and their husbands.
Some scholars believe that Sophocles' "Tereus" was influenced by Euripides' "Medea", and thus must have been produced after 431. However, this is not certain and any influence may well have been in the opposite direction, with Sophocles' play influencing Euripides. Jenny Marsh believes that Euripides' "Medea" did come before Sophocles' "Tereus", based primarily on a statement in Euripides' chorus "I have heard of only one woman, only one of all that have lived, who put her hand on her own children: Ino." Marsh takes this to imply that as of the time of "Medea"'s production, the myth of Tereus had not yet incorporated the infanticide, as it did in Sophocles' play.
An ancient source, Athenaeus’s work Sophists at Dinner, contains references to Sophocles' homosexuality or bisexuality. In that work, a character named Myrtilus, in a lengthy banquet speech claims that Ion of Chios writes in his book Encounters, that Sophocles loved boys as much as Euripides loved women. Myrtilus also repeats an anecdote reportedly told by Ion of Chios that involves Sophocles flirting with a serving boy at a symposium. Myrtilus also claims that in a work by Hieronymus of Rhodes entitled Historical Notes it is said that Sophocles once lured a boy outside to have sex, and afterwards the boy left with Sophocles' cape, while the boy's own cape was left with Sophocles.[19]
Roman philosopher Cicero praised Pacuvius' play "Niptra", which was an imitation of Sophocles' "Odysseus Acanthoplex", because in Pacuvius' play Odysseus does not lament his wounds excessively, as Cicero believed the character did in Sophocles' play.
There is a passage of Plutarch's tract De Profectibus in Virtute 7 in which Sophocles discusses his own growth as a writer. A likely source of this material for Plutarch was the Epidemiae of Ion of Chios, a book that recorded many conversations of Sophocles. This book is a likely candidate to have contained Sophocles' discourse on his own development because Ion was a friend of Sophocles, and the book is known to have been used by Plutarch.[31] Though some interpretations of Plutarch's words suggest that Sophocles says that he imitated Aeschylus, the translation does not fit grammatically, nor does the interpretation that Sophocles said that he was making fun of Aeschylus' works. C. M. Bowra argues for the following translation of the line: "After practising to the full the bigness of Aeschylus, then the painful ingenuity of my own invention, now in the third stage I am changing to the kind of diction which is most expressive of character and best."[32]
The title was inspired by the female character of the play Antigone by Sophocles. The play is about a passionate young woman, that does what she knows is right, even though it is against the law. She makes sure that all of the town's people know what she did and she is punished by the king.