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.

This chapter combines a focus on the scenic trajectories of Antigone and Creon with analyses of the tragedy’s choral songs. It traces the ways in which the characters’ actions, speech and deliberations are conditioned by the extent to which they understand (or misunderstand) the play’s complex reality. It argues that beyond the ethical conflict between them and questions of law and justice, both characters are presented in their own way as paradigms of human vulnerability and the limits of reason. Although Antigone’s action is eventually vindicated, it is not explicitly acknowledged by the gods, at least in her lifetime; instead, by the end of the play, her sacrifice appears to have been mere collateral damage in the gods’ plan to seek compensation for the exposure of Polynices’ corpse. Creon, because of his error of judgement in forbidding Polynices’ burial, undergoes a violent reversal of fortune from powerful and authoritative ruler to a ghost of a man. In the background, a pattern of divine control is interwoven with human agency in ways that are difficult to disentangle, both for the characters and Chorus and for the audience.

This chapter demonstrates that Sophocles’ Electra is pervaded by a strong sense of the fragility of human language and perception, drawing the spectators’ attention to the characters’ partial and often superficial understanding of events and conceptual categories such as familial strife, ancestral suffering, revenge and justice. The chapter focuses in turn on Orestes, Electra and the Paedagogus, analysing their experience of the tragedy’s reality and attempting to trace the larger networks of agency at work in their lives. Like Deianeira, Antigone or Creon, these characters operate in a world that is characterised by obscurity and constant upheaval; yet in Electra, the gods and the broad causal patterns governing the cosmos are more remote and elliptical than ever. Thus, the play can be located within the same intellectual, religious and philosophical traditions as other Sophoclean tragedies – but it engages with, and builds on, these traditions in a different way and to different effects, particularly in its radical questioning of humans’ ability to communicate successfully with the divine, and thus to access any kind of reality.

This chapter introduces the main argument and themes of the book, and positions it within earlier and existing scholarship on archaic and classical Greek literature, religion and philosophy. Particular points of focus include the relationship between Greek tragedy, ritual and theology, and influential mid-twentieth-century research on Sophocles (the ’classics’ of Sophoclean scholarship). The chapter also discusses ancient biographical traditions surrounding Sophocles’ religiosity and piety.