This chapter examines how Sophoclean tragedy approaches and conceptualises the relationship between divine and mortal. It demonstrates that Sophocles builds on the early Greek theological, philosophical and literary tradition outlined in Chapter 1, but steers his own, distinctive course. It argues that Sophocles’ tragedies deploy ideas and beliefs about humans and gods in three, closely interconnected ways: in the explicitly theological and philosophical discourse uttered by characters and choruses; in the trajectories and experiences of individual characters on the stage; and in the broader, religious and ethical patterns that underlie these trajectories, which are occasionally and partially revealed to audiences. As part of its attempt to foreground the close interrelation of dramatic structure, form and content, the chapter devotes considerable space to a new interpretation of dramatic irony. This general discussion relies on readings of four Sophoclean plays, Oedipus Tyrannus, Ajax, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus, as well as on brief comparative analyses of some Aeschylean and Euripidean examples.

This chapter offers an interpretation of early Greek conceptions of divine and human as a coherent constellation of ideas organised around the core notions of human vulnerability, short-sightedness and mutability. Beginning with Achilles’ speech to Priam in Iliad 24, I discuss these key principles and their expressions in genres including epic, elegy, choral lyric, philosophy and historiography. I analyse some of their specific formulations and inflections, with a particular focus on perceptions of the unpredictable and unstable nature of human affairs, the conception of human beings as ephēmeroi (‘creatures of the day’), ideas of divine retribution and the ‘archaic chain’ linking prosperity, greed, arrogance, delusion and disaster. In a second step, I examine the relationship between these ideas and the narratives in which they are embedded, mainly using the examples of the Iliad and Solon’s Elegy to the Muses (fr. 13W).

This chapter offers a detailed reading of Sophocles’ Trachiniae. It begins by analysing the characters’ use of theological and philosophical discourse in the tragedy’s first half, paying close attention to its function and its relationship with its broader dramatic context. It then focuses on the scenic experiences and trajectories of the characters (in particular Deianeira), demonstrating that the play, through its presentation of the interplay between knowledge and ignorance and the experience of reversal, dramatises traditional Greek notions of vicissitude and short-sightedness. Finally, the chapter attempts to trace some of the broader patterns and forces underlying and shaping the play’s events, the means by which these patterns emerge and the characters’ efforts to understand them. It argues that the characters are all, in their own way, pitiful victims of a shifting world that cannot be bent to their will, and is governed by distant, uncaring gods.

Sophocles’ extant tragedies are all characterised by a pervasive concern with the relationship between divine and mortal and with the conditions of human existence in a world dominated by powerful, inscrutable and unpredictable gods. Each play enacts this concern within, and through, its unique narrative, dramatic and communicative structures, which instantiate specific theological and philosophical questions and open them up to their audiences.