Sophocles

Born around 497/496 BCE in Colonus near Athens, Sophocles became one of the three most celebrated tragedians of classical Greece, alongside Aeschylus and Euripides. Ancient sources and modern reference works agree that he wrote well over a hundred plays, though only seven survive complete today.

He was known not just for powerful stories but for refining Greek tragedy itself. His dramas are admired for their strong structure, vivid characters, and moral intensity, and the best known of them—Oedipus the King, Antigone, Electra, Ajax, Philoctetes, Trachiniae, and Oedipus at Colonus—have remained central to world literature.

Sophocles lived through the height of fifth-century BCE Athens and died around 406/405 BCE. More than two thousand years later, his work still stands out for the way it brings fate, pride, suffering, and human choice into unforgettable conflict.