The dominant Athenian playwright in 5th-century-BCE Athens, Sophocles left us seven powerful dramas that still shock as they render the violence that erupts within divinity & humankind. Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Kolonos & Antigone trace three generations of a family manipulated by the inscrutably vindictive god Apollo to commit patricide, incest & kin murder. Elektra & Women of Trakhis begin as studies of women obsessed with hatred & desire but become dissenting critiques of the Greeks’ enthusiasm for revenge & ego-crazed heroics. Two hard-hitting dramas set in war zones, Aias & Philoktetes, use conflicts among Greek warriors at Troy to thrash out political & ethical crises confronting Athenian society itself.
