Sign in

The MouseionSophocles

Sophocles

8 works in the library, 8 with an English translation.

Ancient Greek playwright, born at Colonus. From Wikidata; Wikipedia.

Lived
5th c. BC
Kinds of writing
Tragedy (8)
Dialect
Attic
Analysed
75,446 words

The 8 works

First the work Sophocles is best known for; then the works here with a translation and the most familiar vocabulary: the fewest rare words to look up. That is vocabulary only; grammar, dialect and ideas may still be demanding.

The road of the text

Follow the text from Sophocles's own day to the book in your hands. The gaps are the long silences between one mark and the next.

Before you read. Little numbers like 1 are footnotes. Tap one and it jumps to the source at the bottom of the page, so you can check us. Ancient tradition / legend This is what ancient writers told; it may not be what happened. No label? Then the sources simply state it as fact.

  • The author
  • Copies
  • Print and editions
  1. c. 497 BCThe authorBorn at Colonus, in Attica, about 497/6 BC1
  2. about 17 years laterc. 480 BCThe authorSaid to have led the paean for the victory at Salamis1 Ancient tradition / legend
  3. about 12 years later468 BCThe authorFirst prize at the Dionysia, beating Aeschylus1,2
  4. 25 years later443 BCThe authorOne of the Hellenotamiai, the treasurers of the allies' tribute (443/2)1,17
  5. 2 years later441 BCThe authorElected one of the ten generals, a junior colleague of Pericles, and serves against Samos1
  6. about 20 years laterc. 420 BCThe authorChosen to receive the image of Asclepius; afterwards called Dexion1
  7. about 11 years later409 BCThe authorPhiloctetes wins first prize1
  8. about 3 years laterc. 406 BCThe authorDies at Athens, aged 90 or 92 (406/5)1
  9. about 5 years later401 BCThe authorOedipus at Colonus is performed for the first time, at his grandson's wish1
  10. about 550 years laterc. AD 150CopiesA papyrus roll of the Tracking Satyrs is written out in the second century AD4,5
  11. about 800 years laterc. AD 950CopiesThe Florence codex Laurentianus 32.9 (L), the main medieval witness, is made in the tenth century10,11
  12. about 550 years later1502Print and editionsAldus Manutius prints the first edition of the Greek text at Venice12
  13. about 410 years later1912Print and editionsHunt publishes the Tracking Satyrs among the Oxyrhynchus Papyri4,5
  14. 78 years later1990Print and editionsLloyd-Jones and Wilson publish their Oxford Classical Text and, beside it, Sophoclea13,14

Life and work

Checked against sources · 30 September 2026

Sophocles was a public man as well as a dramatist. In 443/2 BC he was one of the Hellenotamiai, the treasurers who received the tribute of Athens' allies,1,17 and the Life of Sophocles says he was elected one of the ten generals in 441, a junior colleague of Pericles, and served in the campaign against Samos.1 An old story says Athens made him general because of his Antigone. Hugh Lloyd-Jones calls that “most improbable”.1

He wrote more than 120 plays, and only seven survive complete. He entered thirty competitions, won twenty-four, and was never placed lower than second.1 His first triumph came in 468 BC, at the Dionysia, when he beat Aeschylus.1

Ancient tradition / legend Plutarch tells how it happened. The spectators were so partisan that the archon Apsephion did not choose the judges by lot. When Cimon and the other generals came into the theatre to pour the usual offering to the god, he made them swear the oath and sit as judges, ten in all. Sophocles, still young and with his first plays, won, and Aeschylus, “in great distress and indignation”, soon left Athens for Sicily.2

The seven plays that survive are Ajax, Antigone, Oedipus the King, Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus. Philoctetes won first prize in 409 BC. Oedipus at Colonus was put on only in 401, after his death, at the wish of his grandson.1 Aristotle used Oedipus the King in his Poetics as an example of the highest achievement in tragedy.1

One more play came back from the sand. The Tracking Satyrs (Ichneutae) is a satyr play found at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt: some 400 lines of a play that was probably about 800 long, in which satyrs track Apollo's stolen cows and find that the thief is his newborn brother Hermes.3 It was written out on a papyrus roll of the second century AD and published in 1912.45

His Greek can say two things at once. The famous ode in Antigone begins πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ κοὐδὲν ἀνθρώπου δεινότερον πέλει (line 333 in the reader's text).6 LSJ lists for δεινός both “fearful, terrible” and “wondrous, marvellous, strange”, so the line can be heard as “Many things are wondrous and dreadful, and none more so than man” (our translation).7

Things worth knowing about the text

The brother lines. In Antigone Antigone says she would never have defied the citizens for a husband or for children; a lost husband might be replaced, and so might a child. But with her mother and father in the grave, no brother can ever be born.8 Aristotle quotes that last thought in his Rhetoric as an example of how to back up a claim that might seem hard to believe.9

A hero after death. Sophocles was chosen in 420 BC to receive the image of Asclepius, and for this the Athenians gave him, after his death, the epithet Dexion.1

How the words reached us

Manuscripts & transmission

Passed from hand to hand

The main manuscript. The Florence codex Laurentianus 32.9, called L, is of the tenth century.1011 It holds Sophocles, Aeschylus (where it is called M) and Apollonius Rhodius.1011 Its twin in Leiden, BPG 60A, is a palimpsest, and most of it can no longer be read.10

Three plays for school. In Byzantine times most copies held only three of the seven plays: Ajax, Electra and Oedipus the King. About two hundred medieval copies of Sophocles survive.10

Families and a reviser. The most important member of the “Paris” family is Parisinus gr. 2712 (A).10 In the fourteenth century the scholar Demetrius Triclinius made his own recension of the plays, preserved in Paris gr. 2711 (T).10

The papyrus. One play, the Tracking Satyrs, is known from a single papyrus roll found at Oxyrhynchus in 1907 and published in 1912.345

Print. The first edition of the Greek text was printed by Aldus Manutius at Venice in 1502.12

Textual variants

Where the copies disagree

A reviser's recension. In the fourteenth century the scholar Demetrius Triclinius made his own recension of the plays, preserved in Paris gr. 2711 (T).10

A play on one papyrus. The Tracking Satyrs has no medieval copy at all. Its text is what a single papyrus roll, broken and gapped, gives us.345

Line numbers. The reader's text of Antigone numbers the first line of the famous ode 333.6

Books to read it in

  • F. Storr, Sophocles, 2 vols (Loeb Classical Library, 1912–13).15 The Greek of the plays in the reader is Perseus's copy of this edition; the Tracking Satyrs is Hunt's papyrus text of 1912.
  • R. C. Jebb's translations (Cambridge University Press).15 The English Antigone in the reader is Jebb's, of 1891; the Tracking Satyrs is translated by Anne Mahoney.
  • H. Lloyd-Jones and N. G. Wilson, Sophoclis Fabulae (Oxford Classical Texts, 1990), and their Sophoclea: Studies on the Text of Sophocles (Oxford, 1990).1314 The standard Greek text.
  • H. Lloyd-Jones, Sophocles, 3 vols (Loeb Classical Library, 1994–96).16

Where this comes from

Sources (17)
  1. Wikipedia, Sophocles (his offices, victories, plays, the seven survivors, Poetics, hero cult)
  2. Plutarch, Cimon 8, in the reader
  3. Sophocles, The Tracking Satyrs (Ichneutae), in the reader, with its introduction
  4. Wikipedia, Ichneutae (the papyrus, its date and its publication)
  5. Oxyrhynchus Papyri, part 9, no. 1174 (A. S. Hunt, Egypt Exploration Fund, 1912), the papyrus behind the reader's Greek text
  6. Sophocles, Antigone 333, in the reader
  7. Liddell–Scott–Jones, Greek–English Lexicon: the entry δεινός (Perseus Digital Library)
  8. Sophocles, Antigone 904–912, in the reader
  9. Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.16 (1417a), in Perseus
  10. Roger Pearse, Some manuscript traditions of the Greek classics (the Sophocles section)
  11. Biblissima, Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 32.9 (tenth century; Sophocles, Aeschylus, Apollonius Rhodius)
  12. Wikipedia, Editio princeps (Sophocles, Aldus Manutius, Venice, 1502)
  13. Oxford University Press, Sophocles, Fabulae (Lloyd-Jones and Wilson, Oxford Classical Texts, 1990)
  14. Revue des études grecques, review of Lloyd-Jones and Wilson, Sophoclis Fabulae (Oxford 1990) and Sophoclea
  15. Perseus's copies of Sophocles shown in the reader: each file's header names its edition (Storr, Heinemann 1912; Jebb, Cambridge 1891; Mahoney; Hunt, 1912)
  16. Loeb Classical Library, Sophocles, Ajax, Electra, Oedipus Tyrannus (H. Lloyd-Jones, 1994)
  17. Wikipedia, Hellenotamiae (the ten magistrates who received the contributions of the allied states)

We checked every statement above against these sources on 30 September 2026. Where they disagree, we say so. What we could not confirm, we left out.

More

Settings

Reading

Page

μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆοςοὐλομένην, ἣ μυρίʼ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγεʼ ἔθηκε

Greek size
— px
Line spacing
1.8

Short vibrations

A short buzz when you save a word, bookmark a passage or answer right, on phones that allow it (most Android phones; iPhones do not let websites vibrate).