Sophocles

Sophocles was writing in Athens around 497/496 BC, entering a field already occupied by Aeschylus and soon to include Euripides. Over nearly fifty years he became the most celebrated playwright at the Lenaea and Dionysia festivals, racking up a competitive record no peer could match. He changed the form itself: Aristotle credits him with adding a third actor to the stage, which shifted weight from the chorus to the unfolding plot and let him develop characters with a depth earlier playwrights hadn't reached. More than 120 plays came from him, but only seven made it through intact — Ajax, Antig…