Authors

Greek · 406

Sophocles

Sophocles is by critical consensus the most technically accomplished of the three great Greek tragedians. He introduced the third actor (enabling more complex interactions), increased the chorus from twelve to fifteen, and invented the practice of writing plays as individual works rather than in connected trilogies. Of approximately 123 plays, seven survive — Oedipus Rex, Antigone, Electra, Ajax, The Women of Trachis, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus. Aristotle used Oedipus Rex as his model tragedy in the Poetics. Sophocles served as a general alongside Pericles and remained active as a playwright until his death at around ninety.