Sophocles ( c. 497/496 – winter 406/405 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian known as one of three from whom at least one play has survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or contemporary with, those of Aeschylus and earlier than, or contemporary with, those of Euripides . Sophocles wrote more than 120 plays, but only seven have survived in a complete form: Ajax , Antigone , Women of Trachis , Oedipus Rex , Electra , Philoctetes , and Oedipus at Colonus . For almost fifty years, Sophocles was the most celebrated playwright in the dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens , which took place during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and the Dionysia . He competed in thirty competitions, won twenty-four, and was never judged lower than second place. Aeschylus won thirteen competitions and was sometimes defeated by Sophocles; Euripides won four.
71-550: Lew Archer is a fictional character created by American-Canadian writer Ross Macdonald . Archer is a private detective working in Southern California . Between the late 1940s and the early '70s, the character appeared in 18 novels and a handful of shorter works as well as several film and television adaptations. Macdonald's Archer novels have been praised for building on the foundations of hardboiled fiction by introducing more literary themes and psychological depth to
142-543: A New York Times article, "some critics ranked him [Macdonald] among the best American novelists of his generation". William Goldman of the newspaper's Book Review section wrote that the Archer books were "the finest series of detective novels ever written by an American". Over his career, Macdonald was presented with several awards, primarily for his Lew Archer series. In 1964, the Mystery Writers of America awarded
213-719: A boy outside the city walls for sex; and that the boy snatched Sophocles' cloak (χλανίς, khlanis ), leaving his own child-sized robe ("παιδικὸν ἱμάτιον ") for Sophocles. Moreover, when Euripides heard about this (it was much discussed), he mocked the disdainful treatment, saying that he had himself had sex with the boy, "but had not given him anything more than his usual fee" ("ἀλλὰ μηδὲν προσθεῖναι"), or, "but that nothing had been taken off" ("ἀλλὰ μηδὲν προεθῆναι"). In response, Sophocles composed this elegy: Ἥλιος ἦν , οὐ παῖς, Εὐριπίδη, ὅς με χλιαίνων γυμνὸν ἐποίησεν· σοὶ δὲ φιλοῦντι † ἑταίραν † Βορρᾶς ὡμίλησε. σὺ δ᾿ οὐ σοφός, ὃς τὸν Ἔρωτα, ἀλλοτρίαν σπείρων, λωποδύτην ἀπάγεις. It
284-733: A breath. Another account suggests he choked while eating grapes at the Anthesteria festival in Athens. A third holds that he died of happiness after winning his final victory at the City Dionysia. A few months later, a comic poet, in a play titled The Muses , wrote this eulogy: "Blessed is Sophocles, who had a long life, was a man both happy and talented, and the writer of many good tragedies; and he ended his life well without suffering any misfortune." According to some accounts, however, his own sons tried to have him declared incompetent near
355-479: A childless couple, who adopt him, not knowing his history. Oedipus eventually learns of the Delphic Oracle 's prophecy of him, that he would kill his father, and marry his mother; he attempts to flee his fate without harming those he knows as his parents (at this point, he does not know that he is adopted). Oedipus meets a man at a crossroads accompanied by servants; Oedipus and the man fight, and Oedipus kills
426-458: A derivative of) Philip Marlowe , the pioneering sleuth created by Raymond Chandler in the 1930s. However, Macdonald eventually broke from that mold, though some similarities remain. Archer's principal difference is that he is much more openly sensitive and empathetic than the tough Marlowe. He also serves a different function from Marlowe. Chandler's books were primarily studies of Marlowe's character and code of honor, while Macdonald used Archer as
497-418: A lens to explore the relationships of the other characters in the novels. Macdonald wrote, "Certainly my narrator Archer is not the main object of my interest, nor the character with whose fate I am most concerned," and moreover that Archer "is not their [the novels'] emotional center." Another subtle difference was that Marlowe prowled the city of Los Angeles during the 1940s, while Lew Archer primarily worked
568-421: A naval communications officer from 1944 to 1946, Millar returned to Michigan, where he obtained his Ph.D. degree in literature. For his doctorate, Millar studied under poet W. H. Auden , who (unusually for a prominent literary intellectual of the era) held mystery or detective fiction could rise to the level of literature and encouraged Millar's interest in the genre. For his fifth novel, in 1949, he wrote under
639-549: A sheriff mocks his 6'2" and blue eyes. As old failures plague him, we learn he once "took the strap away from my old man", that he was a troubled kid and petty thief redeemed by an old cop, that he sometimes drank too much, that his ex-wife's name is Sue, and he thinks of her often. During World War II , he served in military intelligence in the United States Army , again mentioned in The Doomsters . Archer
710-583: Is a passage of Plutarch 's tract De Profectibus in Virtute 7 in which Sophocles discusses his own growth as a writer. A likely source of this material for Plutarch was the Epidemiae of Ion of Chios, a book that recorded many conversations of Sophocles; but a Hellenistic dialogue about tragedy, in which Sophocles appeared as a character, is also plausible. The former is a likely candidate to have contained Sophocles' discourse on his own development because Ion
781-438: Is also instructed to look after Oedipus' daughters Antigone and Ismene at the end of Oedipus Rex . By contrast, in the other plays there is some struggle with Oedipus' sons Eteocles and Polynices in regard to the succession. In Oedipus at Colonus , Sophocles attempts to work these inconsistencies into a coherent whole: Ismene explains that, in light of their tainted family lineage, her brothers were at first willing to cede
SECTION 10
#1732791838735852-508: Is also largely unknown how the plays were grouped. It is, however, known that the three plays referred to in the modern era as the "Theban plays" were never performed together in Sophocles' own lifetime, and are therefore not a trilogy (which they are sometimes erroneously seen as). Fragments of Ichneutae ( Tracking Satyrs ) were discovered in Egypt in 1907. These amount to about half of
923-437: Is marked by "Aeschylean pomp in the language". Sophocles' second stage was entirely his own. He introduced new ways of evoking feeling out of an audience, as in his Ajax , when Ajax is mocked by Athene, then the stage is emptied so that he may commit suicide alone. Sophocles mentions a third stage, distinct from the other two, in his discussion of his development. The third stage pays more heed to diction. His characters spoke in
994-447: Is persuaded to free Antigone from her punishment, but his decision comes too late and Antigone commits suicide. Her suicide triggers the suicide of two others close to King Creon: his son, Haemon, who was to wed Antigone, and his wife, Eurydice, who commits suicide after losing her only surviving son. The plays were written across thirty-six years of Sophocles' career and were not composed in chronological order, but instead were written in
1065-451: Is put in a middle period. Most of Sophocles' plays show an undercurrent of early fatalism , and the beginnings of Socratic logic as a mainstay for the long tradition of Greek tragedy. The Theban plays comprise three plays: Oedipus Rex (also called Oedipus Tyrannus or Oedipus the King ), Oedipus at Colonus , and Antigone . All three concern the fate of Thebes during and after
1136-476: Is sometimes depressed, often world-weary. An almost Greek sense of tragedy pervades the novels as the sins of omission and crimes of sometimes-wealthy parents are frequently visited upon their children, young adults whom Archer tries desperately to save from disaster. This use of Greek drama was deliberate, e.g., Macdonald based The Galton Case (1959) on a loose interpretation of the Oedipus myth. Key incidents in
1207-686: The Peloponnesian War . Sophocles died at the age of 90 or 91 in the winter of 406/5 BC, having seen, within his lifetime, both the Greek triumph in the Persian Wars and the bloodletting of the Peloponnesian War. As with many famous men in classical antiquity, his death inspired a number of apocryphal stories. One claimed that he died from the strain of trying to recite a long sentence from his Antigone without pausing to take
1278-513: The Trojan War without Philoctetes' bow, the Greeks send Odysseus and Neoptolemus to retrieve him; due to the Greeks' earlier treachery, however, Philoctetes refuses to rejoin the army. It is only Heracles' deus ex machina appearance that persuades Philoctetes to go to Troy. Although more than 120 titles of plays associated with Sophocles are known and presented below, little is known of
1349-430: The archon asked Cimon , and the other strategoi present, to decide the victor of the contest. Plutarch further contends that, following this loss, Aeschylus soon left for Sicily. Though Plutarch says that this was Sophocles' first production, it is now thought that his first production was probably in 470 BC. Triptolemus was perhaps one of the plays that Sophocles presented at this festival. In 480 BC, Sophocles
1420-457: The "whodunit" and the psychological thriller. Even his regular readers seldom saw a Macdonald denouement coming. Tom Nolan, Macdonald's biographer, wrote, "By any standard he was remarkable. His first books, patterned on Hammett and Chandler, were at once vivid chronicles of a postwar California and elaborate retellings of Greek and other classic myths. Gradually he swapped the hard-boiled trappings for more subjective themes: personal identity,
1491-471: The 1990s. Sophocles The most famous tragedies of Sophocles feature Oedipus and Antigone : they are generally known as the Theban plays , though each was part of a different tetralogy (the other members of which are now lost). Sophocles influenced the development of drama , most importantly by adding a third actor (attributed to Sophocles by Aristotle; to Aeschylus by Themistius), thereby reducing
SECTION 20
#17327918387351562-677: The American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar ( / ˈ m ɪ l ər / ; December 13, 1915 – July 11, 1983). He is best known for his series of hardboiled novels set in Southern California and featuring private detective Lew Archer . Since the 1970s, Macdonald's works (particularly the Archer novels) have received attention in academic circles for their psychological depth, sense of place, use of language, sophisticated imagery and integration of philosophy into genre fiction . Brought up in
1633-903: The Lifetime Achievement Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America. In 1982, he was awarded the Robert Kirsch Award by the Los Angeles Times for "an outstanding body of work by an author from the West or featuring the West." These first four novels, all non-series standalones, were initially published using Millar's real name, but have since been intermittently reissued using his literary pseudonym, Ross Macdonald. Two later non-series novels were also published: Allison & Busby published three Archer omnibus editions in
1704-520: The University of Michigan and received a PhD in 1952. He married Margaret Sturm in 1938, though they'd known each other earlier in high school. They had a daughter in 1939, Linda, who died in 1970. The family moved from Kitchener to Santa Barbara in 1946. Millar began his career writing stories for pulp magazines and used his real name for his first four novels. Of these he completed the first, The Dark Tunnel , in 1944. After serving at sea as
1775-484: The West or featuring the West." The character has been adapted for visual media several times: Two feature films starring Paul Newman as "Lew Harper ": Random House Films made a deal in October 2011 to create a movie franchise of Ross Macdonald 's detective Lew Archer with Silver Pictures and Warner Bros. Rights holder Stephen White and Random House Studio president Peter Gethers would be executive producers on
1846-571: The Woman" (credited then to "Ken Millar"). A novel featuring him, The Moving Target , (1949) was the first in a series of eighteen. Macdonald mentions in the foreword to the Archer in Hollywood omnibus that his detective derives his name from Sam Spade 's partner, Miles Archer, and from Lewis Wallace , author of Ben-Hur , though the character was patterned on Philip Marlowe . Macdonald also said
1917-524: The addition of a third actor, which further reduced the role of the chorus , and increased opportunities for development and conflict. Aeschylus, who dominated Athenian playwriting during Sophocles' early career, adopted the third actor into his own work. Besides the third actor, Aristotle credits Sophocles with the introduction of skenographia , or scenery-painting; but this too is attributed elsewhere to someone else (by Vitruvius, to Agatharchus of Samos ). After Aeschylus died, in 456 BC, Sophocles became
1988-765: The author the Silver Dagger award for The Chill . Ten years later, he received the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America, and in 1982 he received "The Eye", the Lifetime Achievement Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America. In 1982, he was awarded the Robert Kirsch Award (the Los Angeles Times Book Prize ) by the Los Angeles Times for "an outstanding body of work by an author from
2059-494: The barrier constructed by Dorothy Sayers between "the literature of escape" and "the literature of expression." These novels, triumphs of his literary alchemy, dare to be both. Millar was born in Los Gatos, California , and raised in his Canadian parents' native Kitchener, Ontario . Millar was a Scots spelling of the surname Miller , and the author pronounced his name Miller rather than Millar . When his father abandoned
2130-418: The classic Greek tragic play where everything takes place in one day; here it might be more than a day, but since the character doesn't get to sleep, it essentially honors the tragic convention and contributes to the sense of unalterable impending doom. Tom Nolan in his Ross Macdonald, A Biography, wrote of the author, "Gradually he swapped the hard-boiled trappings for more subjective themes: personal identity,
2201-416: The end of his life, and he refuted their charge in court by reading from his new Oedipus at Colonus . One of his sons, Iophon , and a grandson, also named Sophocles (son of Ariston ), also became playwrights. A very ancient source, Athenaeus 's work Sophists at Dinner , contains references to Sophocles' sexuality. In that work, a character named Myrtilus claims that Sophocles "was partial to boys, in
Lew Archer - Misplaced Pages Continue
2272-619: The end of the play, order is restored. This restoration is seen when Creon, brother of Jocasta, becomes king, and also when Oedipus, before going off to exile, asks Creon to take care of his children. Oedipus's children will always bear the weight of shame and humiliation because of their father's actions. In Oedipus at Colonus , the banished Oedipus and his daughter Antigone arrive at the town of Colonus , where they encounter Theseus , King of Athens . Oedipus dies and strife begins between his sons Polyneices and Eteocles . They fight, and simultaneously run each other through. In Antigone ,
2343-492: The exact year is unclear, but 497/6 is most likely. He was born into a wealthy family (his father was an armour manufacturer) and was highly educated. His first artistic triumph was in 468 BC, when he took first prize in the Dionysia , beating the reigning master of Athenian drama, Aeschylus . According to Plutarch , the victory came under unusual circumstances: instead of following the usual custom of choosing judges by lot,
2414-475: The family secret, the family scapegoat, the childhood trauma; how men and women need and battle each other, how the buried past rises like a skeleton to confront the present. He brought the tragic drama of Sophocles and the psychology of Freud to detective stories, and his prose flashed with poetic imagery." Philosophical references underlined the thoughtful tone of the novels, with The Chill (1964) having mentions of Parmenides , Heraclitus and Achilles and
2485-407: The family secret, the family scapegoat, the childhood trauma; how men and women need and battle each other, how the buried past rises like a skeleton to confront the present. He brought the tragic drama of Freud and the psychology of Sophocles to detective stories, and his prose flashed with poetic imagery." The Lew Archer novels are recognized as some of the most significant American mystery books of
2556-520: The family unexpectedly when Millar was four years old, he and his mother lived with various relatives, and he had moved several times by his 16th year. Back in Canada as a young adult, he returned to Kitchener, where he studied, and subsequently graduated from the University of Western Ontario with an Honors degree in History and English. He found work as a high school teacher. Some years later, he attended
2627-537: The finances of the city during the political ascendancy of Pericles. In 441 BC, according to the Vita Sophoclis , he was elected one of the ten generals, executive officials at Athens, as a junior colleague of Pericles; and he served in the Athenian campaign against Samos . He was supposed to have been elected to this position due to his production of Antigone , but this is "most improbable". In 420 BC, he
2698-624: The full the bigness of Aeschylus, then the painful ingenuity of my own invention, now in the third stage I am changing to the kind of diction which is most expressive of character and best." Here Sophocles says that he has completed a stage of Aeschylus' work, meaning that he went through a phase of imitating Aeschylus' style but is finished with that. Sophocles' opinion of Aeschylus was mixed. He certainly respected him enough to imitate his work early on in his career, but he had reservations about Aeschylus' style, and thus did not keep his imitation up. Sophocles' first stage, in which he imitated Aeschylus,
2769-399: The genre. Critic John Leonard declared that Macdonald had surpassed the limits of crime fiction to become "a major American novelist" while author Eudora Welty was a fan of the series and carried on a lengthy correspondence with Macdonald. The editors of Thrilling Detective wrote: "The greatest P.I. series ever written? Probably." Initially, Lew Archer was similar to (if not completely
2840-482: The highest achievement in tragedy . Only two of the seven surviving plays can be dated securely: Philoctetes to 409 BC, and Oedipus at Colonus to 401 BC (staged after his death, by his grandson). Of the others, Electra shows stylistic similarities to these two, suggesting that it was probably written in the later part of his career; Ajax , Antigone , and The Trachiniae , are generally thought early, again based on stylistic elements; and Oedipus Rex
2911-523: The importance of the chorus in the presentation of the plot . He also developed his characters to a greater extent than earlier playwrights. Sophocles, the son of Sophillus, was a wealthy member of the rural deme (small community) of Hippeios Colonus in Attica , which was to become a setting for one of his plays; and he was probably born there, a few years before the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC:
Lew Archer - Misplaced Pages Continue
2982-498: The kings Menelaus and Agamemnon to grant Ajax a proper burial. The Women of Trachis (named for the Trachinian women who make up the chorus) dramatizes Deianeira 's accidentally killing Heracles after he had completed his famous twelve labors. Tricked into thinking it is a love charm, Deianeira applies poison to an article of Heracles' clothing; this poisoned robe causes Heracles to die an excruciating death. Upon learning
3053-457: The man (who was his father, Laius, although neither knew at the time). He becomes the ruler of Thebes after solving the riddle of the Sphinx and in the process, marries the widowed queen, his mother Jocasta. Thus the stage is set for horror. When the truth comes out, following from another true but confusing prophecy from Delphi, Jocasta commits suicide, Oedipus blinds himself and leaves Thebes. At
3124-407: The mid 20th century, bringing a literary sophistication to the genre. The critic John Leonard declared that Macdonald had surpassed the limits of crime fiction to become "a major American novelist". William Goldman , who adapted Macdonald's The Moving Target to film as Harper in 1966, called his works "the finest series of detective novels ever written by an American". A later film adaptation
3195-502: The most liberal marriage and divorce laws in the nation, and also due to Nevada then being one of the only states with legalized casino gambling and the associated organized crime presence. Archer's name pays a double homage: first to Dashiell Hammett ("Miles Archer" was the name of Sam Spade 's murdered partner in The Maltese Falcon ), while Lew Wallace was the author of the novel Ben Hur (1880). According to
3266-413: The motivations of his characters. His plots, described as of "baroque splendor", were complicated and often turned on Archer's unearthing family secrets of upwardly mobile clients, sometimes going back over several generations. Lost or wayward sons and daughters were a theme common to many of the novels. Critics have commented favorably on Macdonald's deft combination of the two sides of the mystery genre,
3337-422: The movies. This movie series would start adapting with the eighth book in the series, The Galton Case . From Silver Pictures, Andrew Rona and Alex Heineman will be executive producers with Joel Silver producing. Archer , a 1975 NBC TV series (NBC) starring Brian Keith based on the character. It was cancelled after six episodes: Ross Macdonald Ross Macdonald was the main pseudonym used by
3408-439: The name John Macdonald (his father's first and middle names) in order to avoid confusion with his wife, who was achieving her own success writing as Margaret Millar . He then changed his pen name briefly to John Ross Macdonald, before settling on Ross Macdonald (Ross borrowed from a favorite cousin) in order to avoid being confused with fellow mystery writer John D. MacDonald , who was writing under his real name. Millar would use
3479-437: The novels are typically separated by fifteen years, a scant generation, as evidence from old crimes surfaces to haunt new characters. As suspense in a novel builds toward a climax, Archer often gets little or no sleep, racing the clock and prowling the suburban Southern California landscape day after night after day, trying to put the pieces of a puzzle together in order to prevent new violence. This 36- or 48-hour wakefulness mimes
3550-433: The order Antigone , Oedipus Rex , and Oedipus at Colonus . Nor were they composed as a trilogy – a group of plays to be performed together, but are the remaining parts of three different groups of plays. As a result, there are some inconsistencies: notably, Creon is the undisputed king at the end of Oedipus Rex and, in consultation with Apollo, single-handedly makes the decision to expel Oedipus from Thebes. Creon
3621-545: The play, making it the best preserved satyr play after Euripides' Cyclops , which survives in its entirety. Fragments of the Epigoni were discovered in April 2005 by classicists at Oxford University with the help of infrared technology previously used for satellite imaging. The tragedy tells the story of the second siege of Thebes . A number of other Sophoclean works have survived only in fragments, including: There
SECTION 50
#17327918387353692-544: The pre-eminent playwright in Athens, winning competitions at eighteen Dionysia , and six Lenaia festivals. His reputation was such that foreign rulers invited him to attend their courts; but, unlike Aeschylus, who died in Sicily , or Euripides, who spent time in Macedon , Sophocles never accepted any of these invitations. Aristotle , in his Poetics ( c. 335 BC ), used Sophocles' Oedipus Rex as an example of
3763-488: The precise dating of most of them. Philoctetes is known to have been written in 409 BC, and Oedipus at Colonus is known to have only been performed in 401 BC, posthumously, at the initiation of Sophocles' grandson. The convention on writing plays for the Greek festivals was to submit them in tetralogies of three tragedies along with one satyr play . Along with the unknown dating of the vast majority of more than 120 plays, it
3834-458: The protagonist is Oedipus' daughter, Antigone. She is faced with the choice of allowing her brother Polyneices' body to remain unburied, outside the city walls, exposed to the ravages of wild animals, or to bury him and face death. The king of the land, Creon, has forbidden the burial of Polyneices for he was a traitor to the city. Antigone decides to bury his body and face the consequences of her actions. Creon sentences her to death. Eventually, Creon
3905-404: The province of Ontario, Canada , Macdonald eventually settled in the state of California , where he died in 1983. The Wall Street Journal wrote that: ... it is the sheer beauty of Macdonald’s laconic style—with its seductive rhythms and elegant plainness—that holds us spellbound. "Hard-boiled," "noir," "mystery," it doesn’t matter what you call it. Macdonald, with insolent grace, blows past
3976-422: The pseudonym Ross Macdonald on all his fiction from the mid '50s forward. Most of his books were set primarily in and around his adopted hometown of Santa Barbara. In these works, the city where Lew Archer is based goes under the fictional name of Santa Teresa. In 1983 Macdonald died of Alzheimer's disease . Macdonald first introduced the tough but humane private eye Lew Archer in the 1946 short story "Find
4047-463: The reign of King Oedipus . They have often been published under a single cover; but Sophocles wrote them for separate festival competitions , many years apart. The Theban plays are not a proper trilogy (i.e. three plays presented as a continuous narrative), nor an intentional series; they contain inconsistencies. Sophocles also wrote other plays pertaining to Thebes, such as the Epigoni , but only fragments have survived. The three plays involve
4118-529: The same way that Euripides was partial to women" ("φιλομεῖραξ δὲ ἦν ὁ Σοφοκλῆς, ὡς Εὐριπίδης φιλογύνης"), and relates an anecdote, attributed to Ion of Chios , of Sophocles flirting with a serving-boy at a symposium : βούλει με ἡδέως πίνειν; [...] βραδέως τοίνυν καὶ πρόσφερέ μοι καὶ ἀπόφερε τὴν κύλικα. Do you want me to enjoy my drink? [...] Then hand me the cup nice and slow, and take it back nice and slow too. He also says that Hieronymus of Rhodes , in his Historical Notes , claims that Sophocles once led
4189-463: The suburbs in the 1950s, moving outward with the populace. Like Marlowe, Archer observes growing dichotomies in American society with visual "snapshots". In The Zebra-Striped Hearse , Archer hunts a missing girl who may be dead, possibly murdered. His path repeatedly crosses a group of young surfers who own a hearse painted in gay zebra stripes. To the youngsters, death is remote and funny. To
4260-407: The surname "Archer" was inspired by his own astrological sign of Sagittarius the archer . The novels were hailed by genre fans and literary critics alike. He has been called the primary heir to Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler as the master of American hardboiled mysteries. Macdonald's writing built on the pithy style of his predecessors by adding psychological depth and insights into
4331-405: The tale of Oedipus , who kills his father and marries his mother, not knowing they are his parents. His family is cursed for three generations. In Oedipus Rex , Oedipus is the protagonist . His infanticide is planned by his parents, Laius and Jocasta, to prevent him fulfilling a prophecy; but the servant entrusted with the infanticide passes the infant on, through a series of intermediaries, to
SECTION 60
#17327918387354402-512: The three Theban plays, there are four surviving plays by Sophocles: Ajax , Women of Trachis , Electra , and Philoctetes , the last of which won first prize in 409 BC. Ajax focuses on the proud hero of the Trojan War, Telamonian Ajax , who is driven to treachery and eventually suicide. Ajax becomes gravely upset when Achilles ’ armor is presented to Odysseus instead of himself. Despite their enmity toward him, Odysseus persuades
4473-416: The throne to Creon. Nevertheless, they eventually decided to take charge of the monarchy, with each brother disputing the other's right to succeed. In addition to being in a clearly more powerful position in Oedipus at Colonus , Eteocles and Polynices are also culpable: they consent (l. 429, Theodoridis, tr.) to their father's going to exile, which is one of his bitterest charges against them. In addition to
4544-557: The tortoise , while Black Money (1966) briefly discusses Henri Bergson . The only recurring characters of note are Arnie and Phyllis Walters, who appear in several of the novels and seem to enjoy a warm friendship with Archer. Arnie is a private detective in Reno, Nevada , about 470 miles north of Los Angeles. Archer sometimes calls upon Arnie for assistance with cases that lead to Nevada. Archer's investigations sometimes lead from California to Nevada, due in part to Nevada then having some of
4615-424: The truth, Deianeira commits suicide. Electra corresponds roughly to the plot of Aeschylus' Libation Bearers . It details how Electra and Orestes avenge their father Agamemnon 's murder by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus . Philoctetes retells the story of Philoctetes , an archer who had been abandoned on Lemnos by the rest of the Greek fleet while on the way to Troy . After learning that they cannot win
4686-667: The world-weary detective, it's close and grim. Lew Archer is largely a cipher, rarely described. His background is most thoroughly explored in The Moving Target : he got his training with the Long Beach California Police Department, but left (Archer himself says he was "fired") after witnessing too much corruption. Subsequent novels mentioned details of Archer's life only in passing. In Black Money (1966) Archer mentions that he's about 50 years old, thus born circa 1916. In The Doomsters
4757-449: Was The Drowning Pool (1975), also starring Paul Newman as the detective "Lew Harper". In addition, The Underground Man was adapted as a TV movie in 1974. Over his career, Macdonald was presented with several awards. In 1964, the Mystery Writers of America awarded him the Silver Dagger award for The Chill . Ten years later, he received the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America, and in 1982 he received "The Eye,"
4828-405: Was a friend of Sophocles, and the book is known to have been used by Plutarch. Though some interpretations of Plutarch's words suggest that Sophocles says that he imitated Aeschylus, the translation does not fit grammatically, nor does the interpretation that Sophocles said that he was making fun of Aeschylus' works. C. M. Bowra argues for the following translation of the line: "After practising to
4899-546: Was chosen to lead the paean (a choral chant to a god), celebrating the Greek victory over the Persians at the Battle of Salamis . Early in his career, the politician Cimon might have been one of his patrons, but if he was, there was no ill will borne by Pericles , Cimon's rival, when Cimon was ostracized in 461 BC. In 443/2, Sophocles served as one of the Hellenotamiai , or treasurers of Athena, helping to manage
4970-497: Was chosen to receive the image of Asclepius in his own house when the cult was being introduced to Athens and lacked a proper place (τέμενος). For this, the Athenians gave him the posthumous epithet Dexion (receiver). But "some doubt attaches to this story". He was also elected, in 411 BC, one of the commissioners ( probouloi ) who responded to the catastrophic destruction of the Athenian expeditionary force in Sicily during
5041-518: Was the Sun , Euripides, and not a boy, that got me hot and stripped me naked. But the North Wind was with you when you were kissing † a courtesan †. You're not so clever, if you arrest Eros for stealing clothes while you're sowing another man's field. Sophocles is known for innovations in dramatic structure ; deeper development of characters than earlier playwrights; and, if it was not Aeschylus,
#734265