CHORUS: You that live in my ancestral Thebes, behold this Oedipus,- him who knew the famous riddles and was a man most masterful; not a citizen who did not look with envy on his lot- see him now and see the breakers of misfortune swallow him! Look upon that last day always. Count no mortal happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain.

His reputation was such that foreign rulers invited him to attend their courts although unlike Aeschylus who died in Sicily or Euripides who spent time in Macedon Sophocles never accepted any of these invitations. Sophocles mentions a third stage distinct from the other two in his discussion of his development. Most of Sophocles' plays show an undercurrent of early fatalism and the beginnings of Socratic logic as a mainstay for the long tradition of Greek tragedy.

The most famous tragedies of Sophocles feature Oedipus and Antigone: they are generally known as the Theban plays although each play was actually a part of a different tetralogy the other members of which are now lost. Aeschylus won 14 competitions and was sometimes defeated by Sophocles while Euripides won only 4 competitions.