This Sophocles page at the Rivendell Educational Archive offers a biography, articles, English translations, and a bibliography.

Great Books Index
http://books.mirror.org/gb.sophocles.html

Additional works by Sophocles are also available at this site.

Oedipus Rex

Oedipus the Wreck Home Page
http://vccslitonline.cc.va.us/oedipusthewreck/

Developed by Eric Hibbison of J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College, this site offers a plot summary and forum on Oedipus Rex and links to other Oedipus Web sites.

Sophocles' Oedipus Rex
http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1984/2/84.02.03.x.html

As part of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, this site provides an introduction to the physical aspects of the Greek theater, the structure of Greek tragedy, and an interpretation of Oedipus Rex. Included are a variety of suggestions for teaching strategies that are easily adapted to the teaching of any drama unit.

A Look at Sophocles' Oedipus
http://humlink.humanities.mcmaster.ca/%7Ealders/jcoedipu.htm

This essay by a student at McMaster University analyzes the character of Oedipus.

Study Guide: Oedipus Rex
http://diogenes.baylor.edu/WWWproviders/thorburn/ot.html

This site by John E. Thorburn Jr. at Baylor University lists some questions for students to think about as they read Oedipus Rex.

Antigone

Antigone
http://classics.mit.edu/Sophocles/antigone.html

The Internet Classics Archive offers a downloadable version R. C. Jebb's translation of Antigone. You can also peruse comments that readers have posted or post your own.

Sophocles' Antigone
http://www.uky.edu/ArtsSciences/Classics/ant/antigstruct.htm

This translation of Antigone by William Blake Tyrell and Larry J. Bennett offers a lengthy introduction, the text of the play, and hyperlinked notes that quickly connect to contextual information.

Sophocles' Antigone: Notes and Study Guide
http://ccis09.baylor.edu/WWWproviders/thorburn/antigonesg.html

This site by John E. Thorburn Jr. at Baylor University lists some questions for students to think about as they read Antigone.

Sophocles' Antigone
http://depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/classics/antigone.htm

This study guide by Roger Dunkle at Brooklyn College includes exercises for reading comprehension and interpretation.

Sophocles (495-406 B.C.)
http://history.hanover.edu/ancient/sophocle.htm

The History Department at Hanover College offers links to two different translations of Antigone and to translations of other plays by Sophocles.

Sophocles's Antigone
http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/netshots/antigone.htm

This study guide offers a note on the setting of Antigone, exercises for reading comprehension and interpretation, links to the major characters, and a link to a document called "Greek Theater Knowledge Builder," but you will need to download a free version of Adobe Acrobat before you can open it.

BIOGRAPHY
Sophocles (496?-406 b.c.). Born into a wealthy family at Colonus, a village just outside Athens, Sophocles distinguished himself early in life as a performer, musician, and athlete. Our knowledge of him is based on a very few ancient laudatory notices, but he certainly had a brilliant career as one of the three great Greek classical tragedians (the other two are Aeschylus, an older contemporary, and Euripides, a younger contemporary).

He won the drama competition associated with the Dionysian festival (entries consisted of a tragic trilogy and a farce) at least twenty times (far more often than his two principal rivals). However, Oedipus Rex, his most famous tragedy, and the three other plays it was grouped with, took second place (ca. 429 b.c.).

He lived during the golden age of Athens, when architecture, philosophy, and the arts flourished under Pericles. In 440 b.c., Sophocles was elected as one of the ten strategoi (military commanders), an indication of his stature in Athens. But his long life ended in sadder times, when the Peloponnesian War (431-404 b.c.), between the Athenian empire and an alliance led by Sparta, darkened the region.

Though Sophocles wrote some 123 plays, only 7 have survived; nonetheless, these few works establish him as the greatest of the ancient Western tragedians.