SOPHOCLES, smif'mi-klz (Lat., from Gk.
Esosacis, (c.•106-406 B.C.) . An Athenian dramatist. horn of a prosperous family at Colones, a beautiful suburb of Athens. His long and happy life coincided with the period of the Imperial greatness of Athens. His dramas are the most perfect exemplars of Attic art. His statue in the Lateran is the ideal type of Greek manhood. All the prizes of youth, maturity, and old age fell to him in their season. At the cele bration of the victory of Salamis (we. 480) he was selected to lead the chorus of dancing and singing youths. His grace and youthful beauty in the role of the Princess Nausicaa playing ball with her attendant maidens were long remem bered. In another part he served as the model of the painter Polygnotus for his ideal picture of the bard Thamyris. He composed the music of his beautiful chorie odes, and in addition to his plays wrote many poems, including a nem) to _Esculapius, which was still sung in the third century A.D. He served his country in various capacities as ambassador, treasurer of the tri bute, and general. Ile was noted for his piety, held a minor priesthood in his old age. and was worshiped with heroic honors after death. His cheerful temper and agreeable manners made him a universal favorite, against whom even the scurrilous comedians found little to say. He was the friend of llerodotus, who wrote an ode in his honor, and the associate and colleague of Pericles. His life is a verification of the Perielean boast that grace and versatility in varied service stamp the true Athenian.
In the year 468. at the age of twenty-eight, he produced his earliest play, the Triplelemus, which won the first prize against the veteran _Esehylus. For the remaining years of .Eschylus's life the two mighty rivals contended, with varying suc cess, each learning much from the art of the other. The first recorded contest with Euripides occurred in the year 438, when the younger poet's A leestis won the second place. In the contests of the next thirty-two years Sophocles was gener ally successful, bearing away the first prize about twenty times and never falling below the second place.
He held public office not as a professional poli tician, but "like any other good Athenian." In the year 440 he was elected one of the hoard of generals for the Samian War with Pericles. ac
cording to the legend. because of the popularity or political wisdom of the Antigone. The great poet as general was the theme of many anecdotes, some of which have been preserved by the writer of memoirs, Ion of Chios, who met him in Chian society and at a banquet. where he debated the proprieties of poetic diction with a pedantic schoolmaster and triumphantly displayed his `strategy' in the capturing of a kiss from a pretty child. His old age is said to have been clouded by the attempt of his son, Iophon, to deprive him of the management of his estate on the ground of mental incapacity. The legend adds that Sophocles refuted the charge by reading to the jurors the magnificent chorus in praise of Colonus from the (Edipus at Colones. his latest play, produced after his death by his grandson and namesake. If the tale is tine it is strange that Aristophanes makes no allusion to it in the Frogs (n.e. 405). There the relations between father and son are so friendly that Dionysus is unwilling to bring hack Sophocles to the upper world until he has had an opportunity to test Iophon's poetic powers when unaided by his father. On the death of Euripides in the spring of 406 Sophocles assumed mourning and ordered his chorus to appear without wreaths. A few months later he himself followed his younger rival.
The chief changes in the external form of tragedy attributed to Sophocles are the raising of the number of members of the chorus front twelve to fifteen and the introduction of a third actor, which made possible the complication of the action and the more effective portrayal of character by contrast and juxtaposition. He also abandoned the .Eschylcan fashion of compos ing plays in groups of three about a central myth or motive and made each play an independent psychological and dramatic unity. The chorus participates very slightly if at all in the plot, and the length of the choric odes relatively to the dialogue diminishes, though they never become mere musical interludes, as is too often the case in Euripides. The Sophoclean chorus is the ideal spectator and interpreter of the ethical and religious significance of the action. The great ehoric odes of the Antigone and the (Edipus unite the grace of the Greek lyric to the moral earnestness of the Hebrew psalm.