The Three Theban Plays

The Three Theban Plays - Sophocles Translated by Robert Fagles with Introductions and Notes by Bernard Knox

Acknowledgments
Translator's Preface
Greece and the Theater


SOPHOCLES: THE THREE THEBAN PLAYSIntroduction to Antigone
Antigone


Introduction to Oedipus the King
Oedipus the King


Introduction to Oedipus at Colonus
Oedipus at Colonus


A Note on the Text of Sophocles
Textual Variants
Notes on the Translation: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus
Select Bibliography
The Genealogy of Oedipus
Glossary

Sophocles was born at Colonus, just outside Athens, in 496 BC, and lived ninety years. His long life spanned the rise and decline of the Athenian Empire; he was a friend of Pericles, and though not an active politician he held several public offices, both military and civil. The leader of a literary circle and friend of Herodotus, he was interested in poetic theory as well as practice, and he wrote a prose treatise On the Chorus. He seems to have been content to spend all his life at Athens, and is said to have refused several invitations to royal courts.Sophocles first won a prize for tragic drama in 468, defeating the veteran Aeschylus. He wrote over a hundred plays for the Athenian theater, and is said to have come first in twenty-four contests. Only seven of his tragedies are now extant, these being Ajax, Antigone, Oedipus the King, Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes, and the posthumous Oedipus at Colonus. A substantial part of The Searches, a satyr play, was recovered from papyri in Egypt in modern times. Fragments of other plays remain, showing that he drew on a wide range of themes; he also introduced the innovation of a third actor in his tragedies. He died in 406 BC.

Robert Fagles (1933-2008) was Arthur W. Marks ’19 Professor of Comparative Literature, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He was the recipient of the 1997 PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His translations include Sophocles’s Three Theban Plays, Aeschylus’s Oresteia (nominated for a National Book Award), Homer’s Iliad (winner of the 1991 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award by The Academy of American Poets), Homer’s Odyssey, and Virgil's Aeneid.

Bernard Knox (1914-2010) was Director Emeritus of Harvard’s Center for Hellenic

I know of no better modern English version. Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Oxford University
 
A marvel of craftsmanship and intelligence. Emily Vermeule, Harvard University
 
The most impressive verse translations of Sophocles that have been made. Stephen Spender