Ajax

Women of Trachis (The Trachiniae) by Sophocles

Women of Trachis is a classical Greek tragedy composed by Sophocles (circa 496-406 BCE). The play’s precise dating is unknown, but it is believed to have been produced sometime during the 440s, among Sophocles’s earliest surviving plays, and to have been performed at the City Festival of Dionysus, held in March in Athens. The play itself subverts traditional heroic themes, notably the homecoming hero, the unknowability of the gods, and the importance of pity.

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Philoctetes by Sophocles

Philoctetes is a Greek tragedy first performed in ancient Greece during the Peloponnesian War in 409 BC. It was performed at the ancient Greek festival of City Dionysia, where it was awarded first prize. Philoctetes takes place during the final year of the Trojan War and explores themes of friendship, trauma, deception versus morality, fate, and the individual versus the collective.

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Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King) by Sophocles

Sophocles’s play Oedipus Rex, first performed in the early-to-mid 400s BCE, is one of the most famous and influential tragedies left to us from the ancient Greek tradition. Based on the myth of Oedipus, whose cursed fate was to marry his mother and kill his father, the play explores themes of destiny, free will, and literal and metaphoric vision and blindness.

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Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles

Oedipus at Colonus is one of the three Theban plays written by Ancient Greek playwright Sophocles. It was performed at the festival of Dionysus in 401 BCE and was one of the last plays written by Sophocles before his death. It was the last of the three plays to be written but falls in chronological order between Oedipus Rex and Antigone. It tells the story of the end of the life of Oedipus, and the final segments of the prophecy of Apollo around which the story is centered.

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Antigone by Sophocles

Antigone is one of a triad of plays by Sophocles known as the “Theban plays,” which deal with the fate of the city of Thebes during and immediately following the reign of Oedipus. The other two plays in this triad are Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus. Though the first written, Antigone is the third in the cycle. These stories, in telling the doomed saga of the house of Oedipus, work towards a common moral: No man, no matter how powerful, can outwit fate.

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