So many thousands of scholars have written so many millions of words on Sophocles that one might be forgiven for concluding that there is little prospect of anything valuably new being said. But in fact during the last thirty years our appreciation of this dramatist has been considerably deepened and enriched. It is not that there has been (as with, say, Menander) a great increase in the quantity of material available: nothing of comparable length has turned up since the fragmentary Ichneutae discovered near the beginning of this century, so that as ever we must fall back on the seven fully extant tragedies. Yet, as will be evident from the chapters which follow, scholars have been engaged in a genuinely fruitful debate about the issues at stake in the plays.