  Sophocles (introduced the third actor between 468 and 458; expanded the chorus size from 12 to 15) c. 496 born, son of Sophillos of Colonus, near Athens 480 Leads public victory song after battle of Salamis 468 First tragic victory. Aeschylus loses 467 No production 463? wins second place to Aeschylus' Danaid Trilogy early 440's Ajax 443/442 Elected Hellenotamias (treasury official) 442? Antigone, prob. first prize 440/441 elected general with Pericles in Samian War 438 wins first prize over Euripides' Alcestis, which placed third c. 435-428 Trachiniae 431 Sophocles wins second place, Euripides' Medea third. 428 No production by Sophocles 427? Oedipus Tyrannus, second place to Philocles, son of Aeschylus c. 427 Sophocles elected general with Nicias 420 Sophocles receives cult of Asclepius on its arrival in Athens c. 420-410 Electra 415 No production by Sophocles 413 Sophocles elected proboulos or member of special executive committee after Athenian defeat in Sicily 409 Philoctetes, first prize 406 Death 401 Posthumous production of Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles' grandson Sophocles; first prize 123 plays attested, 7 survive; 20 or 24 victories, never placed below 2nd; wrote a prose work, On the Chorus Go here for fascinating ancient testimonia on the life of Sophocles. Fragments about the myth of Oedipus before Sophocles 1. Homer, Il. 23.679f.: "Who once came to Thebes, when Oedipus had fallen (dedoupotos), to his burial". 2. Od. 11.271ff.: "Then I saw Oedipus' mother, the lovely Epicaste. She in her ignorance did a terrible thing; she married her son. For O. killed his father and took his mother to wife. But the gods soon let the truth come out. They devised a cruel plan: O. remained to suffer the tortures of remorse as King of the Cadmeians in the lovely city of Thebes; but Epicaste, tormented by anguish, hanged herself with a long rope she made fast to the roof-beam overhead, and so came down to the House whose gates the might Hades guards, leaving O. to suffer all the horrors that the Avenging Furies of a mother can inflict." NB: No Sphinx; no self-blinding; no expulsion of O. from Thebes; no children ("soon"). 3. Hesiod speaks only of the war at Thebes (between Polyneices and Eteocles) in which heroes fell "fighting for the flocks of Oedipus". Sphinx not mentioned here, but elsewhere in Hesiod-as the d. of Echidna and as the pest of Thebes. 4. Oedipodeia cycle, Theban myth cycle, in which O's 4 children were born by Euryganeia, 2nd wife after Iocasta (see Pausanias below). 5. Cyclic Thebaid with O's curse on his sons (Fr. 2 below). Very Aeschylean. 6. Pindar (Ol. 2.35ff.) speaks of Erinys, avenging deity visiting Oedipus and his sons: "from the day when his doomed son met Laius and killed him, and accomplished the word earlier in Pytho. But the swift Fury beheld it and slew his warlike sons, each by the other's sword." (from Loeb Classical Library, trans. H. Evelyn White): Fragments about Oedipus: Fragment 1 -- C.I.G. Ital. et Sic. 1292. ii. 11: ....the "Story of Oedipus" by Cinaethon in six thousand six hundred verses. Fragment 2 -- Pausanias, ix. 5.10: Judging by Homer I do not believe that Oedipus had children by Iocasta: his sons were born of Euryganeia as the writer of the Epic called the "Story of Oedipus" clearly shows. Fragment 3 -- Scholiast on Euripides Phoen., 1750: The authors of the "Story of Oedipus" (say) of the Sphinx: `But furthermore (she killed) noble Haemon, the dear son of blameless Creon, the comeliest and loveliest of boys.' From the "Thebaid" (lost epic cycle): Fragment 1 -- Contest of Homer and Hesiod: Homer travelled about reciting his epics, first the "Thebaid", in seven thousand verses, which begins: `Sing, goddess, of parched Argos, whence lords...' Fragment 2 -- Athenaeus, xi. 465 E: `Then the heaven-born hero, golden-haired Polyneices, first set beside Oedipus a rich table of silver which once belonged to Cadmus the divinely wise: next he filled a fine golden cup with sweet wine. But when Oedipus perceived these treasures of his father, great misery fell on his heart, and he straight-way called down bitter curses there in the presence of both his sons. And the avenging Fury (Erinys) of the gods failed not to hear him as he prayed that they might never divide their father's goods in loving brotherhood, but that war and fighting might be ever the portion of them both.' Fragment 3 -- Laurentian Scholiast on Sophocles, O.C. 1375: `And when Oedipus noticed the haunch [the most disgraceful portion] he threw it on the ground and said: "Oh! Oh! my sons have sent this mocking me..." So he prayed to Zeus the king and the other deathless gods that each might fall by his brother's hand and go down into the house of Hades.' Fragment 4 -- Pausanias, viii. 25.8: Adrastus fled from Thebes `wearing miserable garments, and took black-maned Areion (2) with him.' Fragment 5 -- Pindar, Ol. vi. 15: (3) `But when the seven dead had received their last rites in Thebes, the Son of Talaus lamented and spoke thus among them: "Woe is me, for I miss the bright eye of my host, a good seer and a stout spearman alike."' Fragment 6 -- Apollodorus, i. 74: Oeneus married Periboea the daughter of Hipponous. The author of the "Thebais" says that when Olenus had been stormed, Oeneus received her as a prize. Fragment 7 -- Pausanias, ix. 18.6: Near the spring is the tomb of Asphodicus. This Asphodicus killed Parthenopaeus the son of Talaus in the battle against the Argives, as the Thebans say; though that part of the "Thebais" which tells of the death of Parthenopaeus says that it was Periclymenus who killed him.  Oedipus the King radio Performance (NPR)
LA Theatre Works: Oedipus the King by Sophocles on Saturday February 28, 2008 from 10:00pm to midnightFebruary 28, 2009The Play’s The Thing This Saturday, February 28 from 10 pm - midnight on 89.3 KPCC, L.A. Theatre Works’ The Play’s the Thing will air Oedipus the King by Sophocles. Harry Lennix stars as Oedipus, the king who unwittingly kills his father and marries his mother, in this vivid new translation by Greek scholar and director Nicholas Rudall. The broadcast includes a Q & A session with translator and director Nicholas Rudall. Sailing To ByzantiumWilliam Butler YeatsI That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. II An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. III O sages standing in God’s holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. IV Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come. Antigone
Hegel's interpretation of Antigone George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), the immensely influential German philosopher, in his Aesthetik (1820-29), proposed that the sufferings of the tragic hero are merely a means of reconciling opposing moral claims. The operation is a success because of, not in spite of, the fact that the patient dies. According to Hegel's account of Greek tragedy, the conflict is not between good and evil but between goods that are each making too exclusive a claim. The heroes of ancient tragedy, by adhering to the one ethical system by which they molded their own personality, must come into conflict with the ethical claims of another. It is the moral one-sidedness of the tragic actor, not any negatively tragic fault in his morality or in the forces opposed to him, that proves his undoing, for both sides of the contradiction, if taken by themselves, are justified. The nuclear Greek tragedy for Hegel is, understandably, Sophocles' Antigone, with its conflict between the valid claims of conscience (Antigone's obligation to give her brother a suitable burial) and law (King Creon's edict that enemies of the state should not be allowed burial). The two claims represent what Hegel regards as essentially concordant ethical claims. Antigone and Creon are, in this view, rather like pawns in the Hegelian dialectic--his theory that thought progresses from a thesis (i.e., an idea), through an antithesis (an idea opposing the original thesis), to a synthesis (a more comprehensive idea that embraces both the thesis and antithesis), which in turn becomes the thesis in a further progression. At the end of Antigone, something of the sense of mutually appeased, if not concordant, forces does obtain after Antigone's suicide and the destruction of Creon's family. Thus, in contrast to Aristotle's statement that the tragic actors should represent not an extreme of good or evil but something between, Hegel would have them too good to live; that is, too extreme an embodiment of a particular good to survive in the world. He also tends to dismiss other traditional categories of tragic theory. For instance, he prefers his own kind of catharsis to Aristotle's--the feeling of reconciliation. Hegel's emphasis on the correction of moral imbalances in tragedy is reminiscent of the "poetic justice" of Neoclassical theory, with its similar dialectic of crime and punishment. He sounds remarkably like Racine when he claims that, in the tragic denouement, the necessity of all that has been experienced by particular individuals is seen to be in complete accord with reason and is harmonized on a true ethical basis. But where the Neoclassicists were preoccupied with the unities of time and place, Hegel's concerns, like those of other Romantics, are inward. For him, the final issue of tragedy is not the misfortune and suffering of the tragic antagonists but rather the satisfaction of spirit arising from "reconciliation." Thus, the workings of the spirit, in Hegel's view, are subject to the rationalistic universal laws. Hegel's system is not applicable to Shakespearean or Romantic tragedy. Such Shakespearean heroes as Richard III, and Mark Antony cannot be regarded as embodiments of any transcendent good. They behave as they do, says Hegel, now speaking outside of his scheme of tragedy, simply because they are the kind of men they are. In a statement pointing up the essence of uninhibited romantic lust and willfulness Hegel said: "it is the inner experience of their heart and individual emotion, or the particular qualities of their personality, which insist on satisfaction." | From Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: Page 261  437. The difference between self-consciousness and essence, is therefore, perfectly transparent. Because of this, the distinctions in essence itself are not accidental determinatenesses; on the contrary, in virtue of the unity of essence and self-consciousness (this latter being the only possible source of disparity), they are 'masses' articulated into groups by the life of the unity which permeates them, unalienated spirits transparent to themselves, stainless celestial figures that preserve in all their differences the undefiled innocence and harmony of their essential nature. The relationship of self-consciousness to them is equally simple and clear. They are, and nothing more; this is what constitutes the awareness of its relationship to them. Thus, Sophocles'  Antigone †1 acknowledges them as the unwritten and infallible law of the gods.They are not of yesterday or today, but everlasting,Though where they came from, none of us can tell.They are. If I inquire after their origin and confine them to the point whence they arose, then I have transcended them; for now it is I who am the universal, and they are the conditioned and limited. If they are supposed to be validated by my insight, then I have already denied their unshakeable, intrinsic being, Page Break 262 and regard them as something which, for me, is perhaps true, but also is perhaps not true. Ethical disposition consists just in sticking steadfastly to what is right, and abstaining from all attempts to move or shake it, or derive it. Suppose something has been entrusted to me; it is the property of someone else and I acknowledge this because it is so, and I keep myself unfalteringly in this relationship. If I should keep for myself what is entrusted to me, then according to the principle I follow in testing laws, which is a tautology, I am not in the least guilty of contradiction; for then I no longer look upon it as the property of someone else: to hold on to something which I do not regard as belonging to someone else is perfectly consistent. Alteration of the point of view is not contradiction; for what we are concerned with is not the point of view, but the object and content, which ought not to be self-contradictory. Just as I can—as I do when I give something away—alter the view that it is my property into the view that it belongs to someone else, without becoming guilty of a contradiction, so I can equally pursue the reverse course. It is not, therefore, because I find something is not self-contradictory that it is right; on the contrary, it is right because it is what is right. That something is the property of another, this is fundamental; I have not to argue about it, or hunt around for or entertain thoughts, connections, aspects, of various kinds; I have to think neither of making laws nor of testing them. All such thinking on my part would upset that relation, since, if I liked, I could in fact just as well make the opposite conform to my indeterminate tautological knowledge and make that the law. But whether this or the opposite determination is the right, that is determined in and for itself. I could make whichever of them I liked the law, and just as well neither of them, and as soon as I start to test them I have already begun to tread an unethical path. By acknowledging the absoluteness of the right, I am within the ethical substance; and this substance is thus the essence of self-consciousness. But this self-consciousness is the actuality and existence of the substance, its self and its will. Page 284 470. It can be that the right which lay in wait is not present in its own proper shape to the consciousness of the doer, but is present only implicitly in the inner guilt of the resolve and the action. But the ethical consciousness is more complete, its guilt more inexcusable, if it knows beforehand the law and the power which it opposes, if it takes them to be violence and wrong, to be ethical merely by accident, and, like Antigone, knowingly commits the crime. The accomplished deed completely alters its point of view; the very performance of it declares that what is ethical must be actual; for the realization of the purpose is the purpose of the action. Doing directly expresses the unity of actuality and substance; it declares that actuality is not an accident of essence, but that, in union with essence, it is not granted to any right that is not a true right. The ethical consciousness must, on account of this actuality and on account of its deed, acknowledge its opposite as its own actuality, must acknowledge its guilt.Page 550 437. True ethical law is the unwritten, inerrant, unalterable divine law spoken of in the Antigone. It is not anything that an individual can hope either to criticize or to justify, and certainly not in terms of mere self-consistency.From Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Page 114 For this reason, family piety is expounded in Sophocles' Antigone—one of the most sublime presentations of this virtue—as principally thePage Break 115 law of woman, and as the law of a substantiality at once subjective and on the plane of feeling, the law of the inward life, a life which has not yet attained its full actualization; as the law of the ancient gods, 'the gods of the underworld'; as 'an everlasting law, and no man knows at what time it was first put forth'.†24 This law is there displayed as a law opposed to public law, to the law of the land. This is the supreme opposition in ethics and therefore in tragedy; and it is individualized in the same play in the opposing natures of man and woman.†* [A.] Page 115 From Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics: Vol. 2, Page 1217 This sort of development is most complete when the individuals who are at variance appear each of them in their concrete existence as a totality,†1 so that in themselves they are in the power of what they are fighting, and therefore they violate what, if they were true to their own nature, they should be honouring. For example, Antigone lives under the political authority of Creon [the present King]; she is herself the daughter of a King [Oedipus] and the fiancée of Haemon [Creon's son], so that she ought to pay obedience to the royal command. But Creon too, as father and husband, should have respected the sacred tie of blood and not ordered anything against its pious observance. So there is immanent in both Antigone and Creon something that in their own way they attack, so that they are gripped and shattered by something intrinsic toPage Break 1218 their own actual being. Antigone suffers death before enjoying the bridal dance, but Creon too is punished by the voluntary deaths of his son and his wife, incurred, the one on account of Antigone's fate, the other because of Haemon's death. Of all the masterpieces of the classical and the modern world—and I know nearly all of them and you should and can†1 —the Antigone seems to me to be the most magnificent and satisfying work of art of this kind.Herodotus, 3.119 (trans. Rawlinson):
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