Sophocles was born in around 497/96, and died in 406 B.C. He therefore lived through all the events of the 5th century B.C. A scion of a wealthy aristocratic Athenian family, he thus had the chance of a broad education. He held the posts of Hellenotamias and strategos. In 413, after the catastrophe in Sicily, he was one of a body of probouloi appointed to take decisions in order that the city should be more strictly run. He never left Athens, except when his posts required it. The adjectives with which the sources characterize him are staunchly Athenian or very staunchly Athenian: this indicates his love for his birthplace. His circle of friends included all the famous names in art and politics, Perikles being one of them.

His work is animated by the experience of a lifetime of nearly a hundred years; a century full of contradiction and opposition. By now, the city was entrenched as a political unit. In contrast to Aeschylus, Sophocles chiefly dealt with problems resulting from the citizen's relationship as an individual to the polis. He did not confine himself to simply setting out these problems: he also proposed solutions. In his first plays there is chiefly the finding that unlimited individual action has its advantages, but that symbiosis is possible only when action is limited. This can only happen via the laws of the state. In his later plays the dominant attitude is that problems are solved only when there is the will to discuss and compromise. In any case, he refuses to retreat into isolation from public life - a trend which was starting to appear in Athenian society, mainly from the experience of the Peloponnesian war that so preoccupied Euripides.