The Greeks believed that no man could be considered happy before his death, since the happiest life could be destroyed in an instant. Sophocles states this outright both in <em>Oedipus Rex</em> and <em>Antigone</em>: both Oedipus and Creon begin as wealthy, proud men who rule over the city, but they end up ruined and defeated. The element of tragedy that is mos apparent is the belief in the frailty of human life, the vulnerability of even the greatest individuales to the whims of both fate and the gods, what George Steiner termed "absolute tragedy".
