Sophocles
Sophocles (ca. 496-406 BCE) lived in an Athens advanced in power and prosperity: a time of reevaluation of tradition and new intellectual standards — a critical and rationalist movement, confident in the power of human intelligence. He took an active role as a citizen and politician, dying two years before Athen’s surrender to Sparta. Oedipus the King was a later play, probably produced sometime after the start of the Peloponnesian War, 431 BCE.