Sophocles ( 497/496-406/405 BCE) was born in Colonus. While still an adolescent, he led the boy’s chorus in the paean (song of triumph) celebrating the Greek victory over the Persians at the Battle of Salamis. Athenian tradition held that the battle linked the three great ancient tragedians: Aeschylus fought there, Sophocles took part in the festivities, and Euripides was said to have been born on the very day it took place. Thanks to his aristocratic and wealthy background, Sophocles received an excellent education. During the Samian War (511-439 BCE), he served as a general, together with Pericles and Thucydides. In his first participation in a dramatic competition he won first prize, beating Aeschylus into second place. His plays vary in terms of form, with human fate taking on a significant role either as arbitrary personal destiny or as a consequence of divine justice that aims to restore moral order by punishing wrongdoing. Sophocles introduced a number of innovations that became an accepted and established part of the tragic genre. He increased the members of the chorus from twelve to fifteen, added a third actor, and did away with the single-issue tetralogy, presenting dramatic pieces that were independent of one another. In addition to tragedies and satyr plays, he also wrote elegies and paeans, as well as a treatise on the chorus, according to the Byzantine lexicon, the Suda. Aristotle based his Poetics chiefly on the works of Sophocles.
 

He wrote 123 plays, but only 7 of them are extant. 

 

Surviving plays: 
Ajax, Antigone, Trachinian women, Oedipus the King, Electra, Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus. Fragments of the satyr play The trackers also survive. 

 

I live to love and be loved, and not to hate. (Antigone)

 

I prefer
To fail in doing good
Than to do evil and claim victory. (Philoctetes)

 

A man warmed by false hopes has no worth.
A noble man must either live well or die well.
That is all I have to say. (Ajax)