Antigone

In 444, when the Athenian people chose Pericles as their leader, they demanded greatness: democracy combined with imperialism. Periclean democracy meant free speech, free association, and open access to power limited by law; for, assuming that intelligence is born in all, law created by all is the best ruler. Imperialism - to which the Samian War is to be referred - meant wealth, the power to enjoy. If, moreover, enjoyment is itself a kind of power, it too must be limited by law: the law which defines enjoyment is beauty. Freedom, justice, and beauty are the components of greatness which the Athenians had chosen for themselves when they granted first literary acclaim, and then imperial duty, to Sophocles.

Sophocles and his fellow-citizens chose to widen democracy and extend imperialism. The alternative for the east-Greek peoples was oligarchy and Spartan influence. This choice - which the Samians tried to make for themselves - involved less exploitation, but far more repression. The inhabitants of oligarchic states lacked freedom and, often, beauty; instead, the principle of justice was rationalized by their apologists, who broadly used terms such as "order" and "stability," in which they claimed to find the essence of good rule. In this world climate, it is not surprising that the Athenians wished the author of Antigone to hold military office. A man who was so skilled was also wise.

Sophocles might be expected to judge rightly and govern well should the cargo of free society, legal limits, and the acquisitive and aesthetic instincts shift and clash in the waves of crisis. The few details of Sophocles' life that tradition provides combine in brief glimpses. Sophocles, for instance, must have known Anaxa-goras and Herodotos; but how he affected them, or they him, is obscure. The sub-theme of custom vs. nature (nomos-physis) in the Antigone indicates that Sophocles was acquainted with contemporary sophistic teaching, but does not show what stand, if any, he took in this debate. An anecdote tells how once, during the Samian affair of 440, Pericles scolded the poet for showing more interest in a certain boy than in his war duties.

Then again, in old age, we hear, Sophocles praised his impotence, likening himself to a slave who had at last escaped from a maniacal master. Finally, there is the tale that in 420, when Asclepius was brought to Athens to purify the city, Sophocles kept the god in his own house until a temple was built. From this, it appears likely that Sophocles was an officer of the cult of Asclepius. It is difficult not to believe that the author of Antigone was truly a healer. With the Antigone, Sophocles began work on material that interested him for the rest of his life. A dozen years later - perhaps in the plague year 429, the year of Pericles' death - he staged Oedipus Rex. His last play, Oedipus at Kolonos, may have busied him up to that day in 406/5 when, it is said, as he recited from the Antigone to some friends, Sophocles died.