Sophocles (496-406 B.C.) came from a wealthy family in Athens and took an active role in that city-state's political life. He wrote 123 plays, but only seven of them have survived to the present. Antigonc was a huge success for him at the dramatic festivals held in Athens. Ancient texts reveal that he was elected a general in the Athenian military because of the popularity of this work.
Legends of the Bronze Age. The story of Antigonc is drawn from Greek mythology, a great body of oral tales that inspired later Greek painting, sculpture, poetry, and theater. Scholars have used ancient Greek writings that record these oral tales, as well as inscriptions found by modern archaeologists, to determine the genealogy, or family tree, of the legendary rulers of Thebes, the Greek city in which Antigone takes place.
According to legend, Thebes first came to prominence and power around 1380 ts.c. under the rule of a man named Cadmus, who was said to have moved there from Phoenicia (presentday Syria). The people and events that Sophocles portrays in his play were thought to have occurred in the 1200s t;.c., some eight hundred years before Sophocles lived.
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