University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2006 Pre-Socratic Thought in Sophoclean Tragedy Meggan Jennell Arp University of Pennsylvania Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Ancient Philosophy Commons, and the Classical Literature and Philology Commons Recommended Citation Arp, Meggan Jennell, "Pre-Socratic Thought in Sophoclean Tragedy" (2006). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 473. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/473 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/473 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Pre-Socratic Thought in Sophoclean Tragedy Abstract This dissertation investigates the relationship between the plays of Sophocles and the philosophy of the pre-Socratics. The question considered is whether or not Sophocles' tragedies were influenced by pre- Socratic thought in distinction from Sophistic thought. Scholars generally have recognized the impact of the Sophists on Sophoclean tragedy and determined it to be evidence of Sophocles' primarily negative dramatic treatment of so-called 'Enlightenment' thought of the 5th century B.C.E. This study determines the presence of pre-Socratic thought in the tragedies of Sophocles and views its influence as a primarily positive instance of 5th century 'Enlightenment' thought in these plays, in contrast to the general depiction of Sophistic thought. Three works of Sophocles' extant plays are examined in separate chapters. A chapter on Sophocles' Philoctetes elucidates traces of the philosophy of Heraclitus in this tragedy. Sophocles deploys certain Heraclitean images in the character portrayal of Philoctetes, whose moral outlook contrasts with the Sophistic vision of Odysseus. A second chapter, on the Trachiniae, argues that this tragedy recalls the philosophy of Heraclitus, as well as 'Enlightenment' thought of the Ionian scientific tradition in general.