Front Page Authors (by Period) Sophocles

Sophocles

496 BC - 406 BC

About the Author

Perhaps the greatest of Athens’s playwrights Sophocles is known to have written at least 123 dramas, of which only 7 survive. His best-known work is Oedipus Rex. His works embrace the orthodoxy of the day by accepting the existence of a powerful divine force that is ultimately unknowable to man. This force, which runs the universe, has established a body of divine law that humans must follow if they are to avoid calamity. Through his characters, Sophocles explored serious questions about the nature of good and evil in the world and the role of free will.

In The Library:

• author: The Tragedies of Sophocles (1904)