The Life of Sophocles opens by fixing the poet as an Athenian of Colonus, son of Sophillus — not, as Aristoxenus and Ister claimed, a carpenter, bronzesmith, or knife-maker, and not a Phliasian. He was born in the seventy-first Olympiad, the second year, under the archon Philippus (495/4): seven years younger than Aeschylus, twenty-four older than Euripides. After Salamis he led the victory paean, naked and oiled, with a lyre. He dropped the poet’s own acting because of a weak voice, raised the chorus from twelve to fifteen, and invented the third actor.
Carystius gives him twenty victories, often second, never third. At sixty-five the Athenians made him general, seven years before the Peloponnesian War, in the war against the Anaians. Death-stories compete: a sour grape from Callippides at the Choes; reading Antigone and breaking on a long period; joy at the proclamation of victory. Ister says the Athenians voted him yearly sacrifice. Aristophanes of Byzantium counted 130 dramas, seventeen spurious.
The slot is that transmitted bios, not a missing Sophocles.
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