Antigone

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Overview

Antigone is a tragedy by Sophocles, first performed around 441 BCE. After a civil war in Thebes, the new ruler Creon forbids burial of the rebel Polyneices. His sister Antigone buries him anyway, believing that duty to family and the gods outranks a royal decree. The play stages one of the oldest and most durable conflicts in ethics: what a person owes to the state against what they owe to conscience. Both characters have a real case, and both are damaged by their certainty.

Context

Antigone belongs to the Theban cycle, though it was written before Oedipus the King. The setting is the aftermath of the war between Oedipus's sons, Eteocles and Polyneices, who killed each other. In Greek belief, an unburied body left a family and the community under religious obligation, so Creon's decree touched a central duty and not merely a custom.