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Sophocles
Sophocles , c.496 BC-406 BC, Greek tragic dramatist, younger contemporary of Aeschylus and older contemporary of Euripides , b. Colonus, near Athens. A man of wealth, charm, and genius, Sophocles was given posts of responsibility in peace and in war by the Athenians. He was a general and a priest...
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Thomas Watson
Thomas Watson 1557?-1592, English poet and scholar. He translated into Latin the Antigone of Sophocles and the Aminta of Tasso and wrote The Hecatompathia; or, Passionate Century of Love (1582), one of the earliest collections of sonnets in English.
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Antigone
Antigone , in Greek mythology, daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta. In Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus, she and her sister Ismene follow their father into exile at Colonus. When her brothers Eteocles and Polynices killed each other in the war of the Seven against Thebes , Creon, King of Thebes, forbade...
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Lycurgus
Lycurgus c.396-c.325 BC, one of the Ten Attic Orators of the Alexandrian canon; pupil of Isocrates. A capable and honored public official, he administered the state finances from 338 to 326 BC and led (with Demosthenes) the anti-Macedonian party. One of his official acts ordered the editing and pre...
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Philoctetes
Philoctetes , in Greek mythology, son of Poias. He acquired, by gift, the bow and arrow of Hercules by lighting the pyre on which the hero was consumed alive. On his way to the Trojan War, Philoctetes was bitten by a snake. Because the smell of his wound and his cries made him offensive, his compani...
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Euripides
Euripides , 480 or 485-406 BC, Greek tragic dramatist, ranking with Aeschylus and Sophocles . Born in Attica, he lived in Athens most of his life, though he spent much time on Salamis. He died in Macedonia, at the court of King Archelaus. He wrote perhaps 92 plays (the first produced in 455); dur...
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chorus
chorus in the drama of ancient Greece. Originally the chorus seems to have arisen from the singing of the dithyramb , and the dithyrambic chorus allegedly became a true dramatic chorus when Thespis in the 6th cent. BC introduced the actor. First the chorus as a participating actor tied the histr...
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Deutsches Theater
Deutsches Theater , German private theater organization founded in 1883. Under its first director, Adolph L'Arronge, the Deutsches merged with the Freie Bühne (Otto Brahm, director) and in 1884 built its own house in Berlin. Plays by Sophocles, Calderón, Molière, Shakespeare, and ...
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Electra
Electra , in Greek mythology. 1 Daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. After her mother and Aegisthus murdered Agamemnon, Electra, eager for revenge, longed only for the return of her brother, Orestes . The reunion and vengeance of the brother and sister were dramatized by the three great traged...
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irony
irony figure of speech in which what is stated is not what is meant. The user of irony assumes that his reader or listener understands the concealed meaning of his statement. Perhaps the simplest form of irony is rhetorical irony, when, for effect, a speaker says the direct opposite of what she mea...
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