Figure 44 Attic red-figure hydria (water pitcher), by a painter of the Group of Polygnotus, showing the
poet Sappho holding open and reading a roll; height of vase 40 cm, 440–430 BC. Athens, National
Archaeological Museum, 1260.

Source: Konstantinos Kontos / Photostock.

Sophocles

As far as we can tell, Herodotus wrote only one, very long work. By contrast, composers of tragedies
who wished to have their works performed in the annual tragic competition in Athens were required to
submit a sequence of four plays. Aeschylus produced some 80 or 90 dramas, a few of which have been
referred to by name in chapter 7. Tragedies and satyr plays needed to have titles, both because each
playwright was expected to produce multiple dramatic works that needed to be distinguished from one
another and because records were kept of the dramatic competitions, since they were official events
sponsored by the state of Athens. The titles of Attic tragedies and satyr plays were generally simple and
straightforward, consisting of the name of the most prominent character (like Agamemnon) or of the
chorus (The Eumenides). Occasionally, a playwright would compose two or more plays of the same title,
as the dramatist Sophocles did when he composed two plays entitled Oedipus. But these two plays were
written some 20 or 30 years apart, for production at different festivals, so there was no need to
differentiate them at the time of their original performance. Those two tragedies, however, are among the