The Riddle of the Sphinx: Oedipus, wearing a traveler's hat, and the Sphinx asking her riddle The Sphinx's riddle: So the riddle the Sphinx asked Oedipus is: What goes on [...]
Papyrus with part of Sophocles' play Antigone written on it When did Sophocles live? Aeschylus is the first playwright whose plays survive, but Sophocles (ca. 496-406 BC) is the second. [...]
Sappho, from a red-figure vase Sappho is the only woman from archaic or classical Greece whose writing has survived. (She is not the earliest woman writer. That honor goes to [...]
After Phaedra's suicide, Hippolytus drives his chariot away (On a red-figure vase from Southern Italy, ca. 350 BC) Phaedra - the second half of the play So the clueless chorus [...]
Phaedra falls in love with the hunter Hippolytus (Pompeii, ca. 79 AD) Phaedra is a play written by the Greek playwright Euripides. It is concerned with dike, justice, but also [...]
A later painting of Antigone and Oedipus, by Camille Felix Bellanger, in the 1800s. Oedipus at Colonus is a play written by Sophocles. It tells the story of what happened [...]
Oedipus Rex: The shepherd tells his story to Oedipus, while Jocasta listens in horror (now in the Getty Museum) Sophocles wrote this very famous play in the 400s BC. It [...]
Odysseus and his men put out the eye of the Cyclops, Polyphemos (ca. 660 BC) Homer wrote the Odyssey The Greek poet Homer wrote down the Odyssey around 700 BC, [...]
Who was Menander? Here he is on a fresco painting from Pompeii, in Italy, painted after he died. Who was Menander? Menander is the only playwright - a person who [...]
The Pnyx, where the Athenian Assembly met When did Athens attack Melos? In 416 BC, Athens and Sparta were right in the middle of the Peloponnesian War. As part of that war, [...]
