He gained the second prize in tragic competition 428 BC, Euripides being first, and Ion of Chios third. He must have been living in 405 BC, the date of the production of The Frogs of Aristophanes, in which he is spoken of as the only good Athenian tragic poet, although it is hinted that he owed much to his fathers assistance. He wrote fifty plays, of which only a few fragments remain.

It is said that Iophon accused his father before the court of the phratores of being incapable of managing his affairs, so that he might gain the guardianship of his father's fortune, to which Sophocles replied by reading the chorus of the Oedipus at Colonus (688 ff.), which he was currently writing; the piece so proved that he was still in possession of all his mental faculties that he was acquitted.

References

Aristophanes, Frogs, 73, 78, with scholia;

Cicero, De seneclute, vii. 22; Plutarch, Moralia, 785 B;

A Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta (1889);

O Wolff, De Iophonte poeta (Leipzig, 1884).

This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which is in the public domain.