Sophocles

Sophocles (Greek: Σοφοκλῆς; c. 497/496 – winter 406/405 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian known as one of three from whom at least two plays have survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or contemporary with, those of Aeschylus and earlier than, or contemporary with, those of Euripides.

Quotes

Death is not the worst evil, but rather when we wish to die and cannot.
- Electra, l. 1007 (Bartlett's, 9th ed., 1892)

When ice appears out of doors, and boys seize it up while it is solid, at first they experience new pleasures. But in the end their pride will not agree to let it go, but their acquisition is not good for them if it stays in their hands. In the same way an identical desire drives lovers to act and not to act.
- Achilles' Loves, only surviving fragment (tr. Lloyd-Jones, 1996), often paraphrased: "Love is like ice in the hands of children."

A lie never lives to be old.
- Acrisius, fragment 59 (Bartlett's, 9th ed., 1892)

No man loves life like him that's growing old.
- Acrisius, fragment 64 (Bartlett's, 9th ed., 1892)

A short saying often contains much wisdom.
- Aletes, fragment 99 (Bartlett's, 9th ed., 1892)

Truly, to tell lies is not honorable;
But when the truth entails tremendous ruin,
To speak dishonorably is pardonable.
- Creusa, fragment 323 (Bartlett's, 14th ed., 1968)

Do nothing secretly; for Time sees and hears all things, and discloses all.
- Hipponous, fragment 280 (Bartlett's, 9th ed., 1892)

It is better not to live at all than to live disgraced.
- Peleus, fragment 445 (Bartlett's, 9th ed., 1892)

War loves to seek its victims in the young.
- Scyrii, fragment 507 (Bartlett's, 9th ed., 1892)

If it were possible to heal sorrow by weeping and to raise the dead with tears, gold were less prized than grief.
- Scyrii, fragment 510 (Bartlett's, 9th ed., 1892)

Heaven ne'er helps the men who will not act.
- Fragment 288 (ed. Dindorf; tr. Plumptre, 1865, 1878)
  Heaven never helps the man who will not act.

"πῶς," ἔφη, "ὦ Σοφόκλεις, ἔχεις πρὸς τἀφροδίσια; ἔτι οἷός τε εἶ γυναικὶ συγγίγνεσθαι"; καὶ ὅς, "εὐφήμει," ἔφη, "ὦ ἄνθρωπε: ἁσμενέστατα μέντοι αὐτὸ ἀπέφυγον, ὥσπερ λυττῶντά τινα καὶ ἄγριον δεσπότην ἀποδράς."
- I remember hearing Sophocles the poet greeted by a fellow who asked, "How about your service of Aphrodite, Sophocles—is your natural force still unabated?" And he replied, "Hush, man, most gladly have I escaped this thing you talk of, as if I had run away from a raging and savage beast of a master."
- Quoted in Plato, Republic, bk. 1, secs. 329b–c (tr. Paul Shorey, 1930, 1937)

If ills you do, ills also you must bear.
- Quoted in Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus, bk. 2, ch. 37 (tr. Pratten, Dods and Smith, 1867)

If I am Sophocles, I am not mad; and if I am mad, I am not Sophocles.
- Vit. anon. (tr. Plumptre, 1865, 1878)

Phædra

Children are the anchors of a mother's life.
- Fragment 685 (tr. Kathleen Freeman, 1947)

The truth is always the strongest argument.
- Fragment 737 (Bartlett's, 9th ed., 1892)

The dice of Zeus fall ever luckily.
- Fragment 809 (Bartlett's, 9th ed., 1892)

Fortune is not on the side of the faint-hearted.
- Fragment 842 (Bartlett's, 9th ed., 1892)

No oath can be too binding for a lover.
- Fragment 848 (Bartlett's, 9th ed., 1892)

Thoughts are mightier than strength of hand.
- Fragment 854 (Bartlett's, 9th ed., 1892)

στέργειν δέ τάκπεσόντα καί θέσθαι πρέπει σοφόν κυβευτήν, ’αλλά μη στένειν τύχην.
- A wise player ought to accept his throws and score them, not bewail his luck.
- Fragment 947 (Bartlett's, 9th ed., 1892)

Ajax

Γύναι, γυναιξὶ κόσμον ἡ σιγὴ φέρει.
- Woman, silence graces woman.
- Line 293 (tr. R. C. Jebb, 1893)

ἀλλ᾽ ἢ καλῶς ζῆν ἢ καλῶς τεθνηκέναι
τὸν εὐγενῆ χρή
- Nobly to live, or else nobly to die,
  Befits proud birth.
- Line 479 (tr. R. C. Trevelyan, 1919)

Of all human ills, greatest is fortune's wayward tyranny.
- Line 486 (tr. R. C. Trevelyan, 1919)

Ὦ παῖ, γένοιο πατρὸς εὐτυχέστερος,
τὰ δ᾽ ἄλλ᾽ ὅμοιος: καὶ γένοι᾽ ἂν οὐ κακός
- Ah, son, may you prove luckier than your father, but in all else like him. Then you would not prove base.
- Line 550 (tr. R. C. Jebb, 1893)
  Cf. Lucius Accius, Virtuti sis par, dispar fortunis patris.

χάρις χάριν γάρ ἐστιν ἡ τίκτουσ᾽ ἀεί
ὅτου δ᾽ ἀπορρεῖ μνῆστις εὖ πεπονθότος,
οὐκ ἂν γένοιτ᾽ ἔθ᾽ οὗτος εὐγενὴς ἀνήρ.
- For kindness begets kindness evermore,
  But he from whose mind fades the memory
  Of benefits, noble is he no more.
- Line 522 (tr. R. C. Trevelyan, 1919)

ἐχθρῶν ἄδωρα δώρα κοὐκ ὀνήσιμα.
- The gifts of enemies are no gifts and bring no good.
- Line 665 (tr. R. C. Jebb, 1893)

Men of ill judgement oft ignore the good
That lies within their hands, till they have lost it.
- Line 964 (tr. R. C. Trevelyan, 1919)

θεοῖς τέθνηκεν οὗτος, οὐ κείνοισιν, οὔ.
- He died before the gods, not at all before them—no!
- Line 970 (tr. R. C. Jebb, 1893)

Oedipus Rex

Look on Oedipus.
He solved the famous riddle, with his brilliance,
he rose to power, a man beyond all power.
Who could behold his greatness without envy?

How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be
When there's no help in truth!
- Line 316 (tr. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, 1949)
  Wisdom is a curse
  when wisdom does nothing for the man who has it.
  (tr. Stephen Berg and Diskin Clay, 1978)

I will never reveal my dreadful secrets, or rather, yours.
- Line 332, Teiresias loq. (tr. Bernard M. W. Knox, 1959)
  I will not wound myself nor thee. Why seek
  To trap and question me? I will not speak.
  (tr. Gilbert Murray, 1911)
  
  Nay, I see that thou, on thy part, openest not thy lips in season: therefore I speak not, that neither may I have thy mishap.
  (tr. R. C. Jebb, 1893)

The tyrant is a child of Pride
Who drinks from his sickening cup
Recklessness and vanity,
Until from his high crest headlong
He plummets to the dust of hope.
- Line 872 (tr. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, 1949)

Fear? What has a man to do with fear? Chance rules our lives, and the future is all unknown. Best live as we may, from day to day.
- Line 1069, Jocasta loq. (tr. E. F. Watling, 1947)
  Nay, what should mortal fear, for whom the decrees of fortune are supreme and who hath clear foresight of nothing? 'Tis best to live at random, as one may. (tr. R. C. Jebb, 1893)

I am the child of Fortune,
The giver of good, and I shall not be shamed.
She is my mother; my sisters are the Seasons;
My rising and my falling match with theirs.
Born thus, I ask to be no other man
Than that I am, and will know who I am.
- Line 1080 (tr. E. F. Watling, 1947)
  I am Fortune's child,
  Not man's; her mother face hath ever smiled
  Above me, and my brethren of the sky,
  The changing Moons, have changed me low and high.
  There is my lineage true, which none shall wrest
  From me; who then am I to fear this quest?
  (tr. Gilbert Murray, 1911)

The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.
- Line 1184, Second Messenger loq. (tr. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, 1949)
  The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.

Time eases all things.
- Line 1515 (tr. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, 1949)

Let every man in mankind's frailty
Consider his last day; and let none
Presume on his good fortune until he find
Life, at his death, a memory without pain.
- Line 1529, Choragos loq. (tr. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, 1949)
  Look upon him, O my Thebans, on your king, the child of fame!
  This mighty man, this Œdipus the lore far-famed could guess,
  And envy from each Theban won, so great his lordliness—
  Lo to what a surge of sorrow and confusion hath he come!
  Let us call no mortal happy till our eyes have seen the doom
  And the death-day come upon him—till, unharassed by mischance,
  He pass the bound of mortal life, the goal of ordinance.
  (tr. E. D. A. Morshead, 1885)
  
  People of Thebes, my countrymen, look on Oedipus.
  He solved the famous riddle, with his brilliance,
  he rose to power, a man beyond all power.
  Who could behold his greatness without envy?
  Now what a black sea of terror has overwhelmed him.
  Now as we keep our watch and wait the final day,
  count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last.
  (tr. Robert Fagles, 1982)

Antigone

Think not that your word and yours alone must be right.

For God hates utterly
The bray of bragging tongues.
- Line 123 (tr. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, 1938)

Our Ship of State, which recent storms have threatened to destroy, has come safely to harbor at last.
- Line 163 (tr. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, 1938)

I have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the State; and as for the man who sets private friendship above the public welfare — I have no use for him, either.
- Line 181 (tr. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, 1938)

Nobody likes the man who brings bad news.
- Line 277 (tr. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, 1938); cf. "Don’t shoot the messenger."

Money! There's nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.
- Line 295 (tr. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, 1938)

Nothing so evil as money ever grew to be current among men. This lays cities low, this drives men from their homes, this trains and warps honest souls till they set themselves to works of shame; this still teaches folk to practise villainies, and to know every godless deed. But all the men who wrought this thing for hire have made it sure that, soon or late, they shall pay the price.
- Line 295-303 (tr. R. C. Jebb, 1893)

Henceforth ye may thieve with better knowledge whence lucre should be won, and learn that it is not well to love gain from every source. For thou wilt find that ill-gotten pelf brings more men to ruin than to weal.
- Lines 311-314 (tr. R. C. Jebb, 1893)

πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ κοὐδὲν ἀν-
θρώπου δεινότερον πέλει.
- Numberless are the world's wonders, but none
  More wonderful than man.
- Line 333, Second Chorus, Ode I (tr. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, 1938)
  There are many wonderful things, and nothing is more wonderful than man. (tr. R. W. Livingstone, 1935)

It is a good thing
To escape from death, but it is not great pleasure
To bring death to a friend.
- Line 437

ὅστις γὰρ ἐν πολλοῖσιν ὡς ἐγὼ κακοῖς
ζῇ, πῶς ὅδ᾽ οὐχὶ κατθανὼν κέρδος φέρει
- For whoso lives, as I, in many woes,
  How can it be but death shall bring him gain?
  - Lines 463-464 (tr. Plumptre, 1865, 1878)

Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.
- Line 563 (tr. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, 1938)

Happy are they who know not the taste of evil.
- Line 583, Third Chorus 3, Ode II (tr. E. F. Watling, 1947)

τὸ κακὸν δοκεῖν ποτ᾽ ἐσθλὸν τῷδ᾽ ἔμμεν' ὅτῳ φρένας θεὸς ἄγει πρὸς ἄταν
- Evil seems good, soon or late, to him whose mind the god draws to mischief
- Lines 620-3 (tr. R. C. Jebb, 1893), a "famous saying"

Show me the man who keeps his house in hand,
He's fit for public authority.
- Line 660 (tr. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, 1938)

μή νυν ἓν ἦθος μοῦνον ἐν σαυτῷ φόρει,
ὡς φὴς σύ, κοὐδὲν ἄλλο, τοῦτ᾽ ὀρθῶς ἔχειν.
- Think not that thy word, and thine alone, must be right.
- Line 706 (tr. R. C. Jebb, 1893)
  Think not that your word and yours alone must be right. (ed. Moses Hadas, 1965)

ἀλλ᾽ ἄνδρα, κεἴ τις ᾖ σοφός, τὸ μανθάνειν
πόλλ᾽.
- It is no weakness for the wisest man
  To learn when he is wrong.
- Line 710 (tr. E. F. Watling, 1947)

The ideal condition
Would be, I admit, that men should be right by instinct;
But since we are all too likely to go astray,
The reasonable thing is to learn from those who can teach.
- Line 720 (tr. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, 1938)

Love, unconquerable,
Waster of rich men, keeper
Of warm lights and all-night vigil
In the soft face of a girl:
Sea-wanderer, forest-visitor!
Even the pure immortals cannot escape you,
And mortal man, in his one day's dusk,
Trembles before your glory.
- Line 781, Fourth Chorus, Ode III (tr. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, 1938)

τοῖς πᾶσι κοινόν ἐστι τοὐξαμαρτάνειν:
ἐπεὶ δ᾽ ἁμάρτῃ, κεῖνος οὐκέτ᾽ ἔστ᾽ ἀνὴρ
ἄβουλος οὐδ᾽ ἄνολβος, ὅστις ἐς κακὸν
πεσὼν ἀκῆται μηδ᾽ ἀκίνητος πέλῃ.
- All men are liable to err; but when an error hath been made, that man is no longer witless or unblest who heals the ill into which he hath fallen, and remains not stubborn.
- Lines 1024-1027 (tr. R. C. Jebb, 1893); cf. Book of Proverbs 28:13
  All men are liable to err.
  But when an error is made, that man is no longer
  unwise or unblessed who heals the evil
  into which he has fallen and does not remain stubborn. (ed. Moses Hadas, 1965)

ὅσῳ κράτιστον κτημάτων εὐβουλία
- Wisdom outweighs any wealth.
  - Line 1050 (tr. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, 1938)

There is no happiness where there is no wisdom;
No wisdom but in submission to the gods.
Big words are always punished,
And proud men in old age learn to be wise.
- Line 1347, closing lines (tr. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, 1938)

Trachiniæ

There is an ancient saying, famous among men, that thou shouldst not judge fully of a man's life before he dieth, whether it should be called blest or wretched.
- Line 1 (Bartlett's, 9th ed., 1892)

A prudent mind can see room for misgiving, lest he who prospers should one day suffer reverse.
- Line 296 (tr. R. C. Jebb, 1892)

They are not wise, then, who stand forth to buffet against Love; for Love rules the gods as he will, and me.
- Line 441 (tr. R. C. Jebb, 1892)

Knowledge must come through action; thou canst have no test which is not fanciful, save by trial.
- Line 592 (tr. R. C. Jebb, 1892)
  Knowledge must come through action; you can have no test which is not fanciful, save by trial. (ed. Moses Hadas, 1965)

Rash indeed is he who reckons on the morrow, or haply on days beyond it; for tomorrow is not, until today is past.
- Line 943 (tr. R. C. Jebb, 1892)

Oedipus at Colonus

In a just cause the weak o'ercome the strong.
- Line 880 (Bartlett's, 9th ed., 1892)

μὴ φῦναι τὸν ἅπαντα νι-
κᾷ λόγον.
- Not to be born is, past all prizing, best; but, when a man hath seen the light, this is next best by far, that with all speed he should go thither, whence he hath come.
- Line 1225, Chorus (tr. R. C. Jebb, 1893)
  Cf. Yeats, "From Oedipus at Colonus" (1928) and Auden, "Death's Echo" (1937)

ἐν ᾧ τλάμων ὅδ᾽, οὐκ ἐγὼ μόνος,
πάντοθεν βόρειος ὥς τις
ἀκτὰ κυματοπλὴξ χειμερία κλονεῖται,
ὣς καὶ τόνδε κατ᾽ ἄκρας
δειναὶ κυματοαγεῖς
ἆται κλονέουσιν ἀεὶ ξυνοῦσαι.
- In such years is yon hapless one, not I alone: and as some cape that fronts the North is lashed on every side by the waves of winter, so he also is fiercely lashed evermore by the dread troubles that break on him like billows.
- Line 1239, Chorus (tr. R. C. Jebb, 1893)

One word
Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love.
- Line 1616 (tr. Robert Fitzgerald, 1940)

Quotes about Sophocles

ὁ δ’εὔκολος μὲν ἐνθάδ’, εὔκολος δ’ἐκεῖ
- Sweet-tempered as on earth, so here below.
- Aristophanes, Frogs (tr. Storr, 1912)

Be his
My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul
From first youth tested up to extreme old age
Business could not make dull, nor passion wild;
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole;
The mellow glory of the Attic stage,
Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child.
- Matthew Arnold, Sonnet "To a Friend" (1849)

Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand.
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægæan, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
- Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach" (1867)

... Sophocles, the poet loved and feared,
Whose mighty voice once called out of her lair
The Dorian muse severe, with braided hair,
Who loved the thyrsus and wild dances weird.
- Edmund Gosse, "The Tomb of Sophocles"

The first part of the Ajax is prodigiously fine. I do not know that the agonies of wounded honour have ever been so sublimely represented... But the interest of the piece dies with Ajax. In the debates which follow, Sophocles does not succeed as well as Euripides would have done. The odes, too, are not very good.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay, quoted in George Otto Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, Volume I (1876), p. 473

I have been less pleased with this perusal of the Œdipus Tyrannus than I was when I read it in January; perhaps because I then read it all at one sitting. The construction seems to me less perfect than I formerly thought it. But nothing can exceed the skill with which the discovery is managed. The agony of Œdipus is so unutterably grand; and the tender sorrow, in which his mind at last reposes after his daughters have been brought to him, is as moving as anything in the Greek Drama.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay, quoted in George Otto Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, Volume I (1876), p. 473

The Philoctetes is a most noble play; conspicuous even among the works of Sophocles for the grace and majesty of effect produced by the most simple means. There is more character in it than in any play in the Greek language; two or three of Euripides's best excepted.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay, quoted in George Otto Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, Volume I (1876), p. 473

External links

Wikipedia

Wikipedia has an article about:

Sophocles

Wikisource

Wikisource has original works by or about:

Sophocles

H. Lloyd-Jones, Sophocles: Fragments, LCL 483 (Harvard UP, 1996)
E. H. Plumptre, The Tragedies of Sophocles: A New Translation (1865, 1878)
R. C. Jebb, Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, 3rd ed. (Cambridge UP, 1893)
A. C. Pearson, The Fragments of Sophocles, with additional notes from the papers of Sir R. C. Jebb and W. G. Headlam (Cambridge UP, 1917), vols. 1, 2, 3