#Victori Contemporary

[marejadilla]

Philip Muñoz, "Victory", 2016, oil on canvas. B.1942, Las Cruces, New Mexico, active/lives in California.

[wonder-worker]

"It is too easy to dismiss [Leonor of Navarre] as an overambitious schemer who would do anything to obtain a crown, shedding the blood of her own siblings and her subjects in order to attain the throne. However, a deeper investigation of her long lieutenancy and ephemeral reign shows a woman who fought tenaciously to preserve her place but also worked tirelessly to administer a realm which was crippled by internal conflict and the center of the political schemes of France, Aragon, and Castile. She tried to broker peace, fight off those who opposed her, repair the wounds caused by conflict, protect the sovereignty of the realm, and keep the wheels of governance turning. Leonor was not always successful in achieving all of these aims but given the background of conflict and the lack of cooperation she received from all of her family members, bar her loyal husband, it is a huge achievement that she survived to wear the crown at all. Many writers have argued that Leonor deserved the troubled lieutenancy, personal tragedies, an ephemeral reign, and a blackened reputation, basing their assumption that she committed a crime that cannot be [conclusively] proven. However, a more fitting description of her would be that of a resolute ruler who successfully overcame a multitude of challenges in order to survive in a difficult political landscape and gain a hard-fought throne.”

-Elena Woodacre, "Leonor of Navarre: The Price of Ambition", Queenship, Gender and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600 (Edited by Zita Eva Rohr and Lisa Benz)

[houseofcatwic]

Z. S. Liang VICTORY DANCE, LITTLE BIG HORN, 1876.

[propalahramota]

Americans really do post embarrassing shit like this on the Internet and then pull out the lamest excuse of "well I didn't learn it in school cause see our education system is very bad, how was I supposed to know that a cartoon with a bald talking bat in it wasn't a factual representation of history"

[postmodernart81]

Nicholaas Chiao, Heavenly Challenge, 2024, marker on paper

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Hear My Prayer, O Lord

A Prayer in Time of Danger

1 Listen, Lord, as I pray! You are faithful and honest    and will answer my prayer. 2 I am your servant.    Don't try me in your court, because no one is innocent    by your standards. 3 My enemies are chasing me,    crushing me in the ground. I am in total darkness,    like someone long dead. 4 I have given up hope,    and I feel numb all over.

5 I remember to think about the many things you did    in years gone by. 6 Then I lift my hands in prayer, because my soul is a desert,    thirsty for water from you.

7 Please hurry, Lord, and answer my prayer.    I feel hopeless. Don't turn away    and leave me here to die. 8 Each morning let me learn more about your love    because I trust you. I come to you in prayer,    asking for your guidance.

9 Please rescue me from my enemies, Lord!    I come to you for safety. 10 You are my God. Show me    what you want me to do, and let your gentle Spirit    lead me in the right path.

11 Be true to your name, Lord,    and keep my life safe. Use your saving power    to protect me from trouble. 12 I am your servant. Show how much you love me    by destroying my enemies. — Psalm 143 | Contemporary English Version (CEV) The Holy Bible, Contemporary English Version Copyright © 1995 by American Bible Society. Cross References: Genesis 24:63; Exodus 9:29; Exodus 18:20; Nehemiah 9:20; Job 11:13; Psalm 25:4-5; Psalm 25:1; Psalm 25:16; Psalm 27:9; Psalm 28:1; Psalm 31:1; Psalm 31:15; Psalm 39:12; Psalm 44:25; Psalm 52:5; Psalm 55:3; Psalm 54:5; Psalm 59:1; Psalm 77:3; Psalm 77:10-11; Psalm 138:7; Psalm 142:7; Romans 3:10; Romans 3:20

[xandaclaus]

https://deviantart.com/xandaclaus/gallery

[thegoatsongs]

The Spectator [19th century British magazine] thought that while Stoker made admirable use of “vampirology,” the story might have been better had it been set in an earlier period. “The up-to-dateness of the book—the phonograph, diaries, typewriters, and so on—hardly fits in with the mediaeval methods which ultimately secure the victory for Count Dracula’s foes.”

On the subject that contemporaries thought that Dracula was too up-to-date for a vampire story.

Needless to say, the reviewer missed the whole point.

[cathygeha]

REVIEW

Skin Deep by Tara Wyatt

The Prescotts #8

 Friends to lovers romance for two artist friends that have worked together for years – nice easy somewhat steamy story that sees a happy couple together.

 What I liked:

* Violet: artist, dyslexic, bullied early in live, talented, dreams of setting up a project to assist youth through art to as it helped her, has had a crush on Hudson for a while, works as a tattoo artist

* Hudson: artist, tattoo shop owner and artist, lost father in 9/11, jilted by fiancé in past, guarded and closed off from dating, wakes up one day to realize Violet might be the one

* The families of both main characters and seeing them interact together

* Eunice: wealthy art patron, commissions painting from Violet that has Hudson as the centerpiece

* The way Hudson and Violet were there for one another

* That I could see Hudson and Violet together and felt they were well suited

* That the ending reminded me a bit of an O’Henry story – specifically – The Gift of the Magi

* That it is able to stand alone without having read previous books in the series – I have not read the others and was fine

 What I didn’t like:

* Who and what I was meant not to like

* Thinking about how difficult it would be to be different and bullied for it

* One of the customers that came in for a tattoo

 Did I enjoy this story? Yes

Would I read more by this author? YES

 Thank you to NetGalley and Victory Editing Co-op for the ARC – This is my honest review.

 3-4 Stars

    BLURB

 Sometimes friendship is just another word for love. Violet MacAllister is no stranger to rejection. Growing up with dyslexia, she was bullied mercilessly, making her feel as though she would never be good enough. And she believed it—until she found art and a new way of expressing herself. But her wounds run deep, and even though she’s been pining over her best friend Hudson for years, he has no idea, and she intends to keep it that way. He’s everything she could ever want—sensitive, artistic, hard-working, smart, and so, so hot—but she knows they’ll only ever be friends. Hudson Prescott has been through a lot. He lost his father as a child, his fiancée jilted him, and six months ago, he was in a terrifying motorcycle accident that could’ve cost him his life. The one bright spot through the dark times has been his friend and co-worker Violet, who’s talented, driven to help others, and a total sweetheart. She’s his closest friend, and he’d be lost without her. But one emotional night, everything changes, and suddenly Hudson’s seeing Violet in a different light. One that has him questioning how he could’ve been so blind to what was in front of him this entire time: Violet, with her curls, and tattoos, and her laugh that feels like sunshine. So when Violet has a proposition for him—one that involves her painting a nude portrait of him—he agrees. Because now that his eyes are open, he’ll do anything to make her see she’s the one for him. Including bare it all.

[artbyblastweave]

Occasionally blown away by how much Steven Universe there is compared to all of the other contemporary twitblr cartoon darlings. I'm a champion of the idea that they should have let it cook for an additional season so the finale could breathe, but we currently exist in a media ecosystem where securing three ten-episode seasons on a streaming service genuinely begets a victory lap. 160+ episodes and a made-for-tv movie is batshit in light of that. It's such an outlier in run time from every other cartoon that's deliberately courting thoughtful thematic analysis, and I doubt we're gonna get anything like it for a long time

[nias-nook]

Bill Cipher and The Unicorn in Captivity

Soooo, I haven't been looking at Bill related posts much since the book dropped as I have mixed feelings on what TBOB and the subsequent site have revealed about him, his motives, his backstory etc., but (and maybe someone beat me to this) one thing I haven't seen anyone talk about yet is this,

So maybe I'm stating the obvious here, but this is The Unicorn Rests in a Garden, also known as The Unicorn in Captivity. This piece was a part of The Unicorn Tapestries. Its origins are shrouded in mystery and super interesting but I'm not really gonna touch on that here.

Now there is something to be said about how this one piece, and the rest of the tapestries tie to Bill. I'll briefly go over what the tapestry meant when it was made then dive into what contemporary interpretations of the piece say about Bill and his fundamental inability to redeem himself.

Also just want to establish before we get into this that I am...Not a scholar when it comes to this stuff. I just happened to recognise this tapestry and its symbolism when it dropped on the website and had to put my thoughts somewhere. I might add more later if I've forgotten anything, which I probably have.

Given this was a piece made in Europe in the Middle Ages, it's perhaps unsurprising that a lot of interpretations of it are biblical, but we can (mostly) safely assume Hirsch isn't going for a Christ allegory here. Then again, maybe he's going for nothing and all of this is pointless.

What is a little interesting in the wake of TBOB is its ties to marriage.

These tapestries are heavily theorised to have been made to celebrate a wedding, and their comparisons of love and marriage to a hunt that inevitably leads to the imprisonment and taming of your lover. Of course, Bill quite literally suggests this method in the book with The Love Cage that he uses in Weirdmageddon, but there's a million 'Billford is canon' posts (though I think that's reductive at BEST) out there so let's table that as it's pretty self-explanatory. Bill and Ford have been hunting each other for decades and Bill imprisons him in a so-called 'Love Cage' to try and convince Ford to be his 'partner' (be it platonic or romantic). This is what a victory in a relationship is to him.

What I'd like to focus on is the modern interpretation of The Unicorn in Captivity as a self-imposed prison.

"Look at that little unicorn! The beatific smile. He's happy now. He gets to live in a beautiful garden."

"Yeah, in a cage."

"A protective barrier. No one's hunting him anymore. Nor can he hurt anyone with that horn of his."

This summary of the piece is taken from the aptly titled Unicorn in Captivity from another animated series, The Venture Bros. (which, by the way, if you're looking for another show that's a whimsical and fun riff on 80s pop culture with a big mystery element, highly recommend), but this of course isn't the first piece of media to portray it this way. the most notable being The Unicorn in Captivity poem by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

The unicorn is, on the surface, a prisoner. The Theraprism that Bill is now trapped in is a place he longs to escape, but that's the thing, isn't it?

He could escape any time he wanted to.

Bill, like the unicorn, is trapping himself more than the Theraprism is trapping him, but his situation isn't to be pitied, it's karmic justice. What's so satisfying about Bill's eventual comeuppance is that he's the one making himself suffer. The only thing Bill needs to do to escape is to admit he was wrong, to stop revelling in the suffering of others, but...Well, he chooses not to.

He could slip his head

From the jewelled noose

So lightly tied -

If he tried,

As a maid could loose

The belt from her side;

He could slip the bond

So lightly tied -

If he tried.

For all of his guilt about his parents and his so-called 'dark and troubled past', Bill has never regretted a single person he's hurt since. He didn't regret taking over the world, he regretted being caught. He didn't regret hurting Ford, he regretted losing him. Bill will probably be doomed to wallow in the Theraprism for all eternity, cursing his situation and blaming everyone else for his inevitable downfall. An overgrown child who once had too much power and lost it all throwing a tantrum for the ages.

But now he can't hurt anyone with that horn of his.

[fatehbaz]

Between 1970 and 1973, rent strikes erupted in towns and cities throughout the Republic of Ireland. These were organised by local tenants’ associations, most of which were affiliated to the National Association of Tenants Organisations [NAoTO] [...], an umbrella organisation for local associations established in 1967. [...] [O]rganisers claimed that at its peak almost half of all council tenants in the state, or approximately 50,000 households, were withholding their rents. These localised campaigns coalesced into a state-wide movement in late 1972 with [NAoTO] declaring a “national rent strike” which lasted until August 1973. At this point, the government conceded to [NAoTO]'s demands including revisions to the B scale differential rent system, a rent freeze for those on fixed (non-differential) rents, [and] better terms for tenant purchase [...]. [T]he long-term consequences are more ambiguous [...]. Nonetheless, it was described in an article in the Irish Times as “undoubtedly the most dramatic [...] victory ever achieved in this century by tenants versus landlords” [within Ireland]. [...]

Despite the scale and significance of these rent strikes, before this project started there was effectively no information available about them. The [Community Action Tenants Union Ireland] CATU rent strike history project aimed to address this situation, which we understood as an important gap in the collective memory [...]. The project set out to leverage the history of the rent strikes to engage people and involve them in the contemporary housing movement by providing an example of the power of collective action and building connections [...]. The project has been ongoing since late 2021 [...].

---

Gray (2018a, 2022) argues that, beginning in the 1960s, the urbanisation of capital created a new [...] working-class struggle in Italy, [...] characterised by divisions related to suburbanisation and geographical fragmentation. [...] Clare's (2020) analysis of [...] clandestine textile workshops in Buenos Aires highlights the importance of the spatial dimension [...] by describing how workshops are located according to a distinct socio-spatial strategy that divides the workforce and minimises outside interference, thus ensuring access to cheap, vulnerable labour. [...]

There are [...] connections between political decomposition and the loss of memory and knowledge of struggle, such as in the case of workplace restructuring after conflict to prevent the transmission of knowledge and experience between different generations of workers [...]. Responding to this situation, there has been a growing interest in recovering forgotten or suppressed histories of housing and urban struggles [...].

---

The background to the CATU rent strike history project is the so-called “housing crisis” in Ireland, which, contrary to the idea of a specific moment of crisis, has been a continuous feature of Irish society since at least the 19th century [...]. A persistent challenge faced by CATU and other similar movements is that of overcoming a pervasive sense of disempowerment and persuading people that it is worthwhile to engage in collective action [...]. [T]he [housing] crisis [is not necessarily] a unique moment of dysfunction in the housing system [but is] rather [...] a persistent feature of Irish, and increasingly international, capitalism [...]. [L]and and housing have been deeply interrelated with anti-colonial struggles including the Land War of the late 19th century, the civil rights movement, and anti-internment rent strikes in the 1960s [...].

---

27 oral history interviews were carried out with people who participated in the rent strikes in the 1970s [...] from various towns and cities across the Republic of Ireland [...]. Approximately 2,000 relevant articles published in local and national newspapers between 1966 and 1973 were identified and subject to close reading [...] Further data was gathered through a review of 161 articles about the rent strikes in radical newspapers [...]. Previous analyses have emphasised the atomisation of new suburban council estates and how these were part of a concerted effort to undermine working-class radicalism (McManus 2003). Beginning in the late 1950s, suburbanisation was further accelerated by the state's policy to attract [...] speculative investment in commercial office space and the displacement of working-class communities, in particular from inner-city Dublin [...]. However, [...] that fragmentation was countered in the late 1960s and early 1970s through the widespread, rapid formation of tenants’ associations organised around shared interests [...].

The interviews and newspapers produced by local tenants’ associations demonstrated the organisational density and array of community organisations [...] that fought to improve the conditions of everyday life [...]. Some of the forms of organisation that existed across many areas included collectively built and managed community centres, women's and youth committees, sports clubs, social activities for elderly people, and food cooperatives, amongst others. Illustrating the scale of community organising, in August 1973 the [NAoTO] newspaper reported that the West Finglas Tenants Association was running regular outings to the seaside that were attended on average by 2,000 people transported in 20 double-decker buses. [...] As described by [P.], a rent strike organizer in Ballyfermot:

"Street committees didn't just run the rent strike, they also ran summer programmes. If there was old people to come around at Christmas, we'd arrange for someone to cook an extra bit of dinner. It was more a living thing. It wasn't just a single issue. [...]"

---

All text above by: Fiadh Tubridy. "Militant Research in the Housing Movement: The Community Action Tenants Union Rent Strike History Project". Antipode Online Volume 56, Issue 3, pages 1027-1046. May 2024. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[napoleonic-sexyman-tournament]

All the propaganda is under the cut. It's long for both of them:

Alexander I Pavlovich:

a. “Maybe not the most handsome or charismatic man in this tournament, but he has ample chaotic neutral energy that both baffles and fascinates contemporaries. In short, if you're into mysterious men, you won't find a sexier enigma than our imperator.”

b. “Look. Is this or is this not the monsterfucking website.”

c. There are lots of monuments dedicated to him. There's one in Moscow in the Alexander Garden right by the Red Square. While nowhere near as grand as the Alexander Column, I think it's still worth showcasing!

The monument is meant to celebrate his victory in the 1812 Russian invasion. He's holding a sword, proudly standing on top of his enemies' weapon.

The sculptors, however, have never seen the man in their life - all the people involved in the making are still alive and well (i think), so that should tell how new it is. The monument was opened for the public just a decade ago in 2014.

d. quote about this bust from the memoirs of Sophie de Choiseul-Gouffier: “No painter was able to properly capture the features of his face and especially his soft expression. Alexander didn’t like to pose for portraits and they were mostly done with some stealth. In this case sculpture have produced a better likeness. The famed Thorvaldsen made a bust of this sovereign worthy of a hand of such a remarkable artist.”

e. His family nickname might have been ‘our angel’ and the medal commemorating his death bears the inscription “Our angel is in heaven”, but did you know that to this day Alexander looks down on Sankt Petersburg as an actual angel, wings, cross, trampled snake and all? Alas, you cannot see it from the ground, the Alexander Column being so very tall, but the statue of the angel on top certainly seems to take after our sexy thrice-angel Emperor.

f. Apotheosis of Alexander! An eminently universal image, perfectly serviceable for his rise to the throne… of Napoleonic Sexyman Tournament.

It really looks like Peter and Catherine are instructing the Electorate. Gentlevoters, surely you wouldn’t dream of disappointing Sasha’s Grandmother and his scantily clothed giant of a Great-great-grandfather?

g. What is sexier than a man in a dress???

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas

a. “mustache”

b. “Tall! Daring! Swashbuckling! A devoted husband and father! Had a personal conflict with Napoleon! Also it was said he could, while holding onto a bar above his head, LIFT A HORSE WITH HIS THIGHS. How is he not on this list ten times already! Vote for General Dumas!”

c. “He was so hot that he inspired The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and many more books that his son, Alexandre Dumas, wrote. He definitely looked the part of a sexyman, as he son recounts in his memoirs: "My father, as already stated, was twenty-four, and as handsome a young fellow as could be found anywhere. His complexion was dark, his eyes of a rich chestnut colour […]. His teeth were white, his lips mobile, his neck well set on his powerful shoulders, and, in spite of his height of five feet nine inches, he had the hands and feet of a woman. These feet were the envy of his mistresses, whose shoes he was very rarely able to put on." He could crush you between his thighs: "His free colonial life had developed his strength and prowess to an extraordinary degree; he was a veritable American horse-lad, a cowboy. His skill with gun or pistol was the envy of St. Georges and Junot. And his muscular strength became a proverb in the army. More than once he amused himself in the riding-school by passing under a beam, and lifting his horse between his legs." He was so badass he could beat 13 men with 4 and take all the enemy prisoner, and defend against hundreds of men on a bridge by himself. He performed these acts of valour numerous times in Italy. He was so formidable that the Austrians named him the "Schwartz Teufel", or the Black Devil, and his feat at the bridge earned him the moniker of "Horatius Cocles of Tyrol". He wasn't afraid to stand up to his morals and protest against unfair treatment. When unjust executions by the guillotine were happening outside his quarters, he closed the blinds of his curtains, earning him the nickname "Mr. Humanity". When in the Vendée, he complained about the wanton indiscipline in his troops. When in Italy, Berthier wrongly reported his actions as one of "observation" in St. Antonio. Dumas wrote to General Bonaparte that if Berthier was in the same position, he would have shit his pants. Dumas abhorred plunder, never exhorted the locals, and ordered the Directory agent who had come to persuade him otherwise be shot if he dared present himself to Dumas again. Integrity and a sense of moral justice is sexy, mark my words. For Dumas' final qualifier as a sexyman, look no further than this Tumblr heritage post (https://www.tumblr.com/petermorwood/133803437020/hortensevanuppity-elodieunderglass), with 300,000 notes and counting. And I quote: "- daddy general dumas was an immense fierce french warrior who was a 6 foot plus, stunningly gorgeous and charismatic Black gentleman - he invaded egypt - the native egyptians said “is this napoleon? this must be napoleon. we for one welcome our majestic new overlord” - then napoleon showed up - napoleon has all the presence of yesterday’s plain Tesco hummus - the native egyptians were like “… no… no, we’ve thought very hard and we’ll have General Dumas actually” - this did not make napoleon happy - in fact it made him jealous - napoleon felt so emasculated that he launched a campaign of revenge against General Dumas, including taking away his pension, that probably inspired a lot of Alexandre’s rather satisfying scenes in which fathers are nobly avenged and the money-grubbing villains are rubbed in the mud" I rest my case. Tl;dr: He was so hot he inspired multiple books, he was a stronk man who could crush you between his thighs or carry you like a sack of potatoes, and he was so badass that he could take on odds of 1 to 3. He had a foul mouth but a heart of gold and his actions were never self-serving. Posts relating to him on Tumblr have had 300,000 notes and counting. He is qualitatively and quantitatively qualified to be a sexyman.”

[empirearchives]

Napoleon at His Court — A Group Portrait, by Andrea Appiani, c. 1796-98

“Appiani’s drawing suggests how difficult it was for artists to come to terms with the strictly personal nature of Bonaparte’s initiatives… Monarchical imagery failed to capture a fundamental quality of Bonaparte’s rise to power: the triumph of individual will. Without the advantage of birth and lineage, he was an extreme example of revolutionary meritocracy to which contemporaries could respond positively. Appiani does not represent the victorious general as a prince, although something of the theater of hierarchy, characteristic of court imagery, lingers in the pivotal role attributed to Bonaparte.”

Source: Philippe Bordes, Jacques-Louis David: Empire to Exile

[writingwithfolklore]

Creating Fictional Holidays

     Happy Holidays everyone!

     Like mythology or folklore, holidays can add an extra bit of realism and magic to your fictional worlds, and provide for an interesting setting to portray characters, culture, or even family dynamic.

      While you can use real world holidays and adapt them to your worlds, you may also want to create your own! Here’s a few things to consider:

1. What does your holiday celebrate?

Typically, holidays come from historical events or events believed to have happened by religious groups. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Christ. Diwali celebrates the victory of light over darkness, or good’s triumph over evil. Passover celebrates Israelites’ escape from slavery. This would be a great chance to delve into the history of your world, and how it forms and influences communities.

Otherwise (and as well as), holidays can be expressions of important cultural values such as community, hard work, or family. The Day of the Dead (or Dia de los Muertos) is the celebration of honoring passed family members, Labour day is held to honour the struggle for unionization by working people. What does your holiday say about the society or community that created it?

2. How has your holiday adapted?

As much as holiday is entrenched in longstanding tradition, there is no escaping modernization and adaption to contemporary norms. As much as Christmas is a religious holiday at its roots, for many, it’s a celebration of family and gift giving. Rather than being a saint, Santa has become the jolly toy-maker separated from religion entirely.

If your holiday began to celebrate say Harvest season, but in modern times ‘harvest season’ is no longer regularly recognized, how does this society continue to celebrate this holiday? Where does tradition and modern standards intersect?

3. How do people perceive the holiday?

Even joyous, wholesome holidays are going to have haters. Just think of Valentines Day coming around every year—there are people who love it, people who hate it, and people who see it as a superficial excuse to fund capitalism and consumer culture. What do the people of your world believe about the holiday, or what groups/communities are invited or left out?

4. What rituals go into celebrating your holiday?

During Christmas, many families bring in a tree, wrap gifts to put under it, and bake cookies for a secret intruder in the night. A ritual is just a way people honour something—it doesn’t necessarily have to be cultish or ‘evil’. What longstanding rituals go into the celebration of your holiday?

Maybe gifts are exchanged, candles are lit, cards are given out, money is donated, certain foods are given up or certain times limit eating (such as fasting), families gather, parties are held, etc. etc. There are thousands of ways people celebrate what’s important to them. Consider how each family or character in your story might take a slightly different spin on the same rituals.

I hope no matter what or how you celebrate this year, you get time to spend with your loved ones <3

[whencyclopedia]

Antigone

Antigone was the third play in the Oedipus trilogy written by the great Greek playwright Sophocles (c. 496 - c. 406 BCE). Produced around 441 BCE and receiving first prize at the Dionysia festival, the tragedy was actually written long before both Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus. In the play, Antigone returns to Thebes after the death of her father Oedipus. Her brothers Polynices and Eteocles have both been killed in the war between Argos and Thebes. Creon, Antigone's uncle, has assumed the leadership of Thebes and by decree refuses to grant the traitor Polynices a proper burial. Antigone chooses to disobey Creon and bury her brother herself. Having violated Creon's order, she is imprisoned and left to die, eventually hanging herself. Haemon, her fiancé and Creon's son, joins her, taking his own life. Finally persuaded by a prophet to change his mind, Creon is too late to save either his son or Antigone. His wife Eurydice commits suicide, blaming Creon for the death of her son. In the end, Creon is left alone.

Sophocles

Sophocles was born around 496/5 BCE to a wealthy family from Colonus, a deme near the heart of Athens. Unlike many of his fellow playwrights, he was active in Athenian politics, serving as a treasurer and a general in 441-440 BCE with the statesman Pericles. Later, he became a member of a select group of magistrates given the task of reorganizing finances and domestic affairs after the disastrous defeat of Athens at Syracuse (412-411 BCE). He had two sons; Iophon by his wife Nicostrate, and Ariston by his mistress Theoris, whose son Sophocles the Younger also became a minor playwright, like his uncle Iophon. Writing almost to the day he died, his final play of the Theban trilogy, Oedipus at Colonus, was presented in competition by Iophon in 401 BCE. Sophocles received eighteen victories in competition at Dionysia, more than both Aeschylus and Euripides. Although active in Athenian political circles, his plays rarely contain any references to contemporary events or issues, making the dating of his plays difficult. Unfortunately, of his over 120 plays, only seven have survived.

According to Edith Hamilton in her book The Greek Way, by the time of Sophocles, the “stream of life” (196) that had existed a few short years earlier during the time of Aeschylus was long gone. Athens was in decline. Hamilton believed Sophocles viewed life as being hard. The always conservative playwright - even in the matters of religion - still believed in his beloved city and its laws, always upholding the established order. To Hamilton, he embodied everything we know to be Greek. He was “direct, lucid, simple and reasonable” (199).

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