Ancient Athens, the most successful tragedian. Sophocles (497/6–406 BC), along with Aeschylus and Euripides, was one of the three greatest tragic poets of Athens and is considered one of the greatest poets in the world. The themes of his works are drawn from mythology and legend. Each work contains at least one heroic figure, a character whose strength, courage, or intelligence surpasses human norms—however, they also possess more than the usual pride and self-confidence. These traits combine to lead to a tragic end.

Hugh Lloyd-Jones offers us, in two volumes, a new translation of the seven surviving works. Volume I contains Oedipus Tyrannus (which tells the famous story of Oedipus), Alkestis (a heroic tragedy about wounded self-esteem), and Electra (the story of siblings seeking revenge against their mother and her lover for the death of their father).

Volume II contains Oedipus at Colonus (the culmination of the fallen hero's life), Antigone (a conflict between public authority and the conscience of an individual woman), The Women of Trachis (a deadly attempt by Heracles' wife to regain her husband’s love), and Philoctetes (the intrigue of Odysseus to bring an unwilling hero to the Trojan War).

Of the other works of Sophocles, only fragments have been preserved; however, from them, many insights can be gathered about his language and dramatic art. The significant fragmentary characters—ranging from two lines to a very substantial portion of the satyr play "The Trackers"—are collected in Volume III of the present edition. In his introductory notes, Lloyd-Jones provides contexts for the fragments of known works.