Sophocles’ date of birth has been placed anywhere between 500 and 480 BC, but 497/496 has become a commonly accepted date. His birthplace was likely Colonus, a bond that reflects itself in the tenderness with which he describes the place in Oedipus at Colonus:
“A place famed for its horses, stranger,
is where you have come, the best habitation of the earth,
Colonus aglow, where the nightingale sings
Clear and bright—she’s always around here—
Down on the green and up in the glens,
Perching in the ivy, dark as wine,
And the divine, never-touched, not-to-be-touched,
Green dripping with fruit and out of the sun,
Out of the wind in any stormy weather.
Dionysus in Celebration is always out roaming
In this place, enfolded here with the nymphs that raised him.”
(668-680, translation my own)
It seems he came from a relatively wealthy family, received the best education Athenian money could buy, and was held in high regard in his youth. Though specifics are scarce on the ground, we know that Sophocles was politically active as well as artistically regarded. Due to the nature of Athenian democracy, most well-regarded citizens performed some acts of civic service or another due to a lot-based system, but Sophocles appears to have gone above and beyond in his participation in the life of the city-state. In 442, he was a treasurer in charge of tracking tributes received from the Delian League (a groupd of city-states led by Athens established after the Persian Wars. Nominally it was a proto-League of Nations, but in actuality a semi-imperial state with Athens in power) and even ascended to strategos, or ‘general’, one of ten officials elected to the position. It is likely that he was re-elected to that position on subsequent occasions, serving under the famous Pericles.
He seems to have hit his stride with his playwriting career in his late 20’s, beating the well-established Aeschylus in the City Dionysia in 468 B.C (though the play with which he won is unknown). Of the approximately 90 plays Sophocles wrote in his lifetime, only seven have survived the intervening millennia intact. Three of those seven (the other four being Ajax, Women of Trachis ,Philoctetes and Electra) form what we call the Theban Cycle, the Oedipus Cycle, or the Theban Plays.
N.B.: It is vital to note that these were not meant to be performed together. There is nearly a decade between Rex and Antigone and even more than that between Antigone and Colonus (which was performed posthumously in around 401 B.C, well after Sophocles had died). Tragedies were composed in tetralogies (three tragedies followed by a satyr-play, performed over the course of one day at the City Dionysia), and each of these plays were part of separate tetralogies, decades apart.
What little we can pin down about Sophocles paints the picture of an elite member of Athenian society: highly educated, well-respected, and comfortable in both the artistic and political spheres (two areas of interest that were much more openly intertwined in Athens than they are in contemporary life). He had at least one son (who aided his father’s dramatic career) and was, by extension, likely married for some period of his life. His sexuality and lifestyle is the subject of much debate.
-Emma