Sophocle was one of the three great tragic dramatists of ancient Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Euripides.

Sophocles was born about 496 BC in Colonus Hippius (now part of Athens), the son of Sophillus, reportedly a wealthy armor-maker.

In 468 BC, at the age of 28, he defeated Aeschylus, whose preeminence as a tragic poet had long been undisputed, in a dramatic competition.

His life, which ended in 406 BC at about the age of 90, coincided with the period of Athenian greatness.

Sophocles is considered by many modern scholars the greatest of the Greek tragedians and the perfect mean between the titanic symbolism of Aeschylus and the rhetorical realism of Euripides.

He increased the number of actors from two to three, thus lessening the influence of the chorus and making possible greater complication of the plot and the more effective portrayal of character by contrast and juxtaposition.

Sophocles also effected a transformation in the spirit and significance of a tragedy; thereafter, although problems of religion and morality still provided the themes, the nature of man, his problems, and his struggles became the chief interest of Greek tragedy.