Guide Note: Antigone by Sophocles is a tragic play that explores the earlier Theban legend. The play begins after Oedipus left his sons Eteocles and Polynices in charge with the expectation that each would rule for a year, but Eteocles refused to give up power leading to a civil war.
The new king Creon gives a decree that one of the brothers, Polynices, will be denied burial rites. Polynices' sister Antigone gives him the rites anyway. Antigone is caught and says she accepts her death sentence of being put in a cave to starve to death. Creon's son Haemon warns him that the people support Antigone and that killing her will cause another death. When a blind prophet Tiresias repeats the warning Creon decides to release her, but he is too late. She has hanged herself, Haemon kills himself, and Creon's wife Eurydice kills herself in grief over the death of her son.
Fast Facts:
- Written in 442 BC
- Third of three Theban plays
- Set in Thebes
- One of few Greek plays to show the inside of a palace
- One of the main themes is duty to man made laws versus divine laws
- Fewer references to gods than most Athenian plays
- Modern adaptation in French by Jean Anouilh
- Play based on oral history
Important Quotations:
- "Nothing so evil as money ever grew to be current among men. This lays cities low, this drives men from their homes, this trains and warps honest souls till they set themselves to works of shame; this still teaches folk to practice villainies, and to know every godless deed. But all the men who wrought this thing for hire have made it sure that, soon or late, they shall pay the price."
- "There is no happiness where there is no wisdom; No wisdom but in submission to the gods. Big words are always punished, And proud men in old age learn to be wise."
- "It is no weakness for the wisest man to learn when he is wrong."
