Sophocles

Sophocles (496–406 bc), Greek tragedian who wrote c.120 plays, of which seven survive, including Ajax, The Women of Trachis, Electra, and Philoctetes. The group known as the Theban plays, Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone, have long been influential in English literature, either directly or in versions by Seneca. Thomas Watson's translation of the Antigone into Latin (1581) was widely read, and both Milton's Samson Agonistes and Dryden's Oedipus draw on Sophocles, though Dryden is chiefly indebted to Seneca. In the 19th cent. Sophocles really came into favour. Shelley read him on his last and fatal sailing trip. Bulwer-Lytton adapted his Oedipus the King (1846). Mathew Arnold produced his Sophoclean play Merope (1858) and two Sophoclean fragments, an Antigone (1849) and a Dejaneira (1867). Swinburne introduced Sophoclean touches into his Erechtheus (1876); and later, Freud hit on the term ‘Oedipus complex’ to describe certain features of infantile sexuality. This led to numerous translations and adaptations of the Theban plays by Yeats, Pound, and Heaney among others.