The Theban plays - Sophocles

These three plays by Sophocles (496–406 B.C.), though they are all based on the legend of the royal house of Thebes, were written at different periods and dramatize different themes. Antigone is the tragedy of a woman ruled by conscience, an over-confident king, and a young man tormented by conflicting loyalties. King Oedipus is a vast and living portrait of man, without parallel in the Greek theatre, and Oedipus at Colonus completes the story with the legend of the passing of the aged hero.