Sophocles (496?-406 b.c.). Born into a wealthy family at Colonus, a village just outside Athens, Sophocles distinguished himself early in life as a performer, musician, and athlete. Our knowledge of him is based on a very few ancient laudatory notices, but he certainly had a brilliant career as one of the three great Greek classical tragedians (the other two are Aeschylus, an older contemporary, and Euripides, a younger contemporary).

 He won the drama competition associated with the Dionysian festival (entries consisted of a tragic trilogy and a farce) at least twenty times (far more often than his two principal rivals). However, Oedipus Rex, his most famous tragedy, and the three other plays it was grouped with, took second place (ca. 429 b.c.).

 He lived during the golden age of Athens, when architecture, philosophy, and the arts flourished under Pericles. In 440 b.c., Sophocles was elected as one of the ten strategoi (military commanders), an indication of his stature in Athens. But his long life ended in sadder times, when the Peloponnesian War (431-404 b.c.), between the Athenian empire and an alliance led by Sparta, darkened the region.

 Though Sophocles wrote some 123 plays, only 7 have survived; nonetheless, these few works establish him as the greatest of the ancient Western tragedians.