Women of any society always have had a different role to play than that of men. Psychologically, a woman is to find a mate in order to bring healthy offspring into the world. Conservative thinking tells women to cook, clean, take care of the family, and to perform other miscellaneous domestic chores. Yet, Sophocles also defines the place of a woman in his tragedies: Oedipus the King and Antigone. Women were respected as very powerful and dignified individuals, but at the same time were forbidden to meddle with the affairs of men as they, figuratively, were to stand behind men at all times. The mother and daughter combination of Jocasta, the typical Greek aristocrat, and Antigone, a strong-willed woman who defies her sex role, opposing each other in almost every aspect, clearly portrays the different lives of women at the time of these Greek tragedies.

The political beliefs...