The Requiem at Athens (Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus)

Not to be born is best, the chorus sings at the darkest moment of Sophocles' final play. "But once a man has seen the light, the next best thing, by far, is to go back, back where he came from, quickly as he can." These lines were performed in the Theatre of Dionysus in the spring of 401 BCE, a few years after the playwright's own death. The Athens that heard them had just lost a 27-year war, endured a reign of terror under the Thirty Tyrants, and was trying to bandage its wounds. Sophocles, who had written 123 plays across the most spectacular period of Athenian history, left this last work as a requiem—not just for Oedipus, but for a passing empire.

The plot: a fallen king's final hours

The play opens years after the events of Oedipus the King. The blind, ragged former monarch has wandered to Colonus, a real village northwest of Athens, where a sacred grove stands. His youngest daughter Antigone is with him. A local tells them the ground is holy, and Oedipus, recognizing the place, refuses to leave. When the elders of Colonus learn who he is, they recoil—the man who killed his father and married his mother is an abomination. But Oedipus insists he was innocent: he killed his father in self-defense, married his mother as a prize for saving Thebes from the Sphinx. "I had no choice," he says.