Theban Plays

Sophocles was born in 496 BC. His long life spanned the rise and decline of the Athenian Empire. He wrote over a hundred plays, many of which are published as Penguin Classics, drawing on a wide and varied range of themes. E.F. Watling translated a range of Greek and Roman plays for Penguin, including the seven plays of Sophocles and the tragedies of Seneca.

• The Theban legend; "King Oedipus"; the legend continued; "Oedipus at Colonus"; the legend continued; "Antigone"; notes to "King Oedipus"; notes to "Oedipus at Colonus"; notes to "Antigone".

“[Oedipus the King] is Sophocles’ most famous play and the most celebrated play of Greek drama . . . Aristotle cites it as the best model for a tragic plot . . . Freud recognized the play’s power to dramatize the process by which we uncover hidden truths about ourselves . . . Sophocles is more interested in how Oedipus pieces together the isolated fragments of his past to discover who and what he is and in tracing the hero’s response to this new vision of himself.”—from the Introduction by Charles Segal