Antigone

Description:

Antigone is a tragedy written by the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles around 442 BCE. It is the third play in the Theban trilogy, which also includes Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus. However, in terms of the chronological order of the events within the story, Antigone is the last.

The play opens with Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus, expressing her intention to bury her brother Polynices, despite an edict by King Creon that anyone who buries Polynices will be punished by death. Polynices and his brother Eteocles had killed each other in a battle for the throne of Thebes, and Creon, the new ruler, decrees that Eteocles will be honoured with a proper burial while Polynices’ body will be left unburied as a traitor.

Antigone defies Creon’s edict and buries her brother, believing that divine law outweighs human law. She is caught and brought before Creon, who condemns her to be entombed alive despite pleas from his son Haemon, who is betrothed to Antigone. The seer Tiresias warns Creon that the gods disapprove of his actions, but Creon initially refuses to yield. Eventually, he decides to free Antigone, but it is too late. Antigone has hanged herself. Haemon, in grief, tries to kill Creon but ends up taking his own life. Upon hearing of her son’s death, Creon’s wife Eurydice also kills herself. Creon is left to lament his own stubbornness and the resulting tragedies.

1. Sophocles. Antigone. Translated by Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Classics, 1982.

2. Knox, Bernard. The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

3. Kitto, H.D.F. Greek Tragedy: A Literary Study. New York: Routledge, 2014.

4. Goldhill, Simon. Reading Greek Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.