Antigone

A clash between two laws

Antigone is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles, first performed in Athens around 441 BC. A young woman defies the king's order and buries her brother, who has been declared a traitor, because she believes the gods' law outranks the state's. The king, her uncle, sentences her to death. The play sets loyalty to family and the gods against loyalty to the city and its ruler, and it has been argued over ever since.

Sophocles wrote more than a hundred plays, and seven survive whole. Antigone is one of three about the family of Oedipus, often called the Theban plays. They are not a trilogy. Sophocles wrote them over almost forty years and out of story order: Antigone first, then Oedipus Rex, and Oedipus at Colonus at the end of his life. In the story, Antigone comes last.

The background: Oedipus, king of Thebes, learned that he had killed his father and married his mother. His sons, Eteocles and Polynices, later fought over the throne. Polynices raised an army from the city of Argos and attacked Thebes. The two brothers killed each other in single combat, and the attack failed. Their uncle Creon became king.

The main characters:

• Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, who insists on burying her brother.
• Ismene, her cautious sister.
• Creon, the new king of Thebes, their uncle.
• Haemon, Creon's son, who is engaged to Antigone.
• Tiresias, the blind prophet.
• Eurydice, Creon's wife.
• The Chorus, a group of Theban elders who comment on the action in song.

Greek tragedy has no acts. The play alternates between spoken scenes, called episodes, and songs by the Chorus, called odes. It all happens in one day, in front of the royal palace.

The prologue: two sisters

Before dawn, Antigone brings Ismene outside the palace to talk in secret. Creon has issued a decree. Eteocles, who died defending the city, will be buried with full honors. Polynices, who attacked it, must lie unburied and unmourned, food for dogs and birds. Anyone who buries him will be stoned to death.

For the Greeks, an unburied body was a horror. The soul could not rest, and the gods required the living to give the dead their rites. Antigone says she will bury Polynices and asks Ismene to help. Ismene refuses. They are women, she says, and they are not made to fight men or defy the state. Antigone tells her to do as she likes and says she will be proud to die for a holy crime. She leaves alone.

The Chorus enters and sings a victory song. The Argive army has been driven off, and the city is saved.

First episode: the decree and the dust

Creon addresses the elders. His first speech sets out his view of rule. A man who puts a friend above his country is worth nothing. The state is the ship that carries everyone, and only when it sails upright can there be friendship at all. That is why the traitor must stay unburied.

A guard arrives, terrified. Someone has sprinkled a thin layer of dust over the body and performed the rites, leaving no tracks. The Chorus wonders whether the gods did it. Creon is furious at the suggestion. He is sure that rebels have bribed the guards, and threatens to torture them if they do not find the culprit.

The Chorus sings the famous Ode to Man. There are many wonders, but none more wonderful than man. He crosses the sea, plows the earth, tames animals, builds cities and makes laws. He has found a remedy for everything except death. But his cleverness can lead him to good or to evil, and a man who honors the laws and the gods' justice stands high in his city.

Second episode: Antigone caught

The guard returns with Antigone. The guards had swept the body clean and watched it. In the middle of the day a dust storm came up. When it cleared, they saw Antigone wailing over the bare corpse, pouring offerings and covering it again.

Creon asks whether she knew his decree. She did. She explains why she broke it. His order came from a man. The gods' unwritten and unfailing laws are older. They are not of today or yesterday; they live forever. She would rather face Creon's punishment than the gods'. As for death, she is going to die someday anyway, and dying early in such misery is a gain.

Creon refuses to be ruled by a woman. He also accuses Ismene. Ismene, now willing, tries to claim a share of the guilt. Antigone rejects her: Ismene chose to live, and Antigone chose to die. Ismene asks Creon whether he will really kill his own son's bride. Creon says there are other fields for Haemon to plow. Both sisters are taken inside.

The Chorus sings of the curse on the house of Oedipus, which passes from generation to generation and now reaches its last roots.

Third episode: father and son

Haemon arrives. Creon expects him to be angry and lectures him on obedience. Nothing is worse than disobedience; a man must never be beaten by a woman.

Haemon answers carefully at first. He respects his father. But he hears what people say in the streets, and the city mourns for Antigone. They say she deserves gold honors, not death. He begs his father not to think that only his own view is right. Trees that bend in a flood survive; trees that resist are torn out by the roots.

Creon is outraged at being taught by a boy. The argument grows bitter. Creon says the city belongs to its ruler. Haemon answers that he would rule well over a desert. Creon accuses him of being a woman's slave. Haemon says that if she dies, her death will destroy another. Creon takes this as a threat. Haemon storms out, saying his father will never see his face again.

Creon decides Ismene is innocent. For Antigone, he chooses a death that avoids the pollution of killing kin directly. She will be shut alive in a rock tomb with a little food, and left there. The Chorus sings of the power of Eros, the love that drives even good men to wrong.

Fourth episode: Antigone's lament

Antigone is led out on her way to the tomb. She sings a lament with the Chorus. She will never marry. Her wedding will be with death. She compares herself to Niobe, a queen turned to stone on a mountain, always weeping. The elders half pity her and half blame her: she has gone too far, and she is paying for her father's sins.

Then she gives a strange argument that readers still debate. She would not have broken the law for a husband or a child, she says, because she could find another husband and have another child. But with her parents dead, she can never have another brother. She asks what law of the gods she has broken, and why, if she acted with piety, she is called impious. She is taken away.

The Chorus sings of other figures from myth who were shut away and suffered.

Fifth episode: Tiresias

The blind prophet Tiresias arrives, led by a boy. He tells Creon that the signs are terrible. The birds fight and tear each other. The sacrifices will not burn. The altars of the city are fouled by dogs and birds carrying flesh from the unburied body. The gods are rejecting Thebes. All men make mistakes, he says, but a wise man repairs his. Stubbornness is folly.

Creon accuses him of taking bribes. Tiresias, angered, makes a prophecy. Before long, Creon will pay for the corpse he keeps from the grave and the living girl he puts in a grave with a corpse of his own blood. Wailing will fill his house.

Tiresias leaves. The Chorus reminds Creon that this prophet has never been wrong. Creon gives way. He orders his men to bury Polynices and free Antigone, and goes himself. The Chorus sings a joyful hymn to the god Dionysus, asking him to come and heal the city.