"Success is dependent on effort"
About this Quote
“Success is dependent on effort” sounds like the kind of tidy moral you’d find stitched on a pillow today, but in Sophocles’ world it lands with harder edges. Greek tragedy is not a self-help genre; it’s a public argument about what humans can control when the gods, the city, and fate keep moving the goalposts. That’s the point of the line’s austerity. Sophocles doesn’t promise happiness, fairness, or even victory. He draws a narrower boundary: if success happens at all, it will not be a gift. It will be paid for.
The subtext is almost polemical. Tragedy often features characters who confuse status with security, or inheritance with entitlement. Effort becomes a moral filter: it distinguishes earned authority from merely claimed authority. It also exposes the cruelty of the tragic world. When someone strains, sacrifices, and still fails, the audience feels the injustice more sharply because the work was real. Effort doesn’t guarantee success, but it does make the outcome legible; it turns mere misfortune into a test of character, and character into spectacle.
Context matters: Sophocles wrote for a civic audience in democratic Athens, where rhetoric about merit, duty, and discipline had political weight. This is less a motivational slogan than a social instruction, the kind a polis tells itself to keep citizens striving, soldiers training, and leaders accountable. It’s bracing, even a little suspicious: a culture reminding itself that glory has a price, and that excuses are cheaper than action.
The subtext is almost polemical. Tragedy often features characters who confuse status with security, or inheritance with entitlement. Effort becomes a moral filter: it distinguishes earned authority from merely claimed authority. It also exposes the cruelty of the tragic world. When someone strains, sacrifices, and still fails, the audience feels the injustice more sharply because the work was real. Effort doesn’t guarantee success, but it does make the outcome legible; it turns mere misfortune into a test of character, and character into spectacle.
Context matters: Sophocles wrote for a civic audience in democratic Athens, where rhetoric about merit, duty, and discipline had political weight. This is less a motivational slogan than a social instruction, the kind a polis tells itself to keep citizens striving, soldiers training, and leaders accountable. It’s bracing, even a little suspicious: a culture reminding itself that glory has a price, and that excuses are cheaper than action.
Quote Details
| Topic | Success |
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