¹ The text of the Antigone will be quoted according to Lloyd-Jones, H. and Wilson, N., Sophoclis Fabulae (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar. The translations are by Lloyd-Jones, H., Sophocles: Antigone, The Women of Trachis, Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus (Cambridge, MA, 1994)Google Scholar. Of course, the choice to leave κτήμασι untranslated is mine; Lloyd-Jones renders it as ‘men's property’.

² The transmitted text is indefensible for Dawe, R.D., Sophoclis Tragoediae. Tom. 2: Trachiniae, Antigone, Philoctetes, Oedipus Coloneus (Leipzig, 1985 ²)Google Scholar, who obelizes the words ἐν κτήμασι πίπτεις and writes in the apparatus criticus that ‘emendatio nulla arridet’. Recently, Willink, C.W., ‘Critical studies in the cantica of Sophocles: I. Antigone’, CQ 51 (2001), 65–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar has proposed the emendation of the words ἐν κτήμασι πίπτεις into ἐν κλέμμασι παίζεις, since ‘a more general point about Love's sportive thievishness would fit the overall structure better’ (at 77). Yet, his paraphrase of the opening lines—‘Love's victories in “battle” (or not in battle) are paradoxically achieved by subtle means such as the soft cheeks of a girl, not by weaponry’—makes clear that, in his reconstruction, line 782 adds little to what precedes and follows it.

³ See e.g. Eur. Hipp. 1274–80 and Soph. fr. 684 Radt. Aphrodite is celebrated in similar terms in Hymn. Hom. Ven. 2–5 and Soph. fr. 941.7–12 Radt.

⁴ Brunck, R.F.P., Sophoclis Antigone (London, 1779), 54Google Scholar.

⁵ Chantraine, P., ‘Sur l'emploi de κτήματα au sens de “bétail, cheptel”’, REG 72 (1946), 5–11Google Scholar.

⁶ The translation is by Bury, R.G., Plato: Laws. Vol. 1: Books 1–6 (Cambridge, MA, 1926), 475Google Scholar.

⁷ Chantraine (n. 5), 8.

⁸ Chantraine (n. 5), 9 (‘a stockyard in which the livestock consists of slaves’).

⁹ Rowe, C.J., Plato Phaedo (Cambridge, 1993), 128–9Google Scholar. The analogy with slaves is developed in the following lines of the dialogue (62d6–e1), when Cebes compares the man who tries to break free from the tutelage of the gods to a runaway slave. The interpretation of κτήματα as ‘cattle’ at Phd. 62b8 and at Grg. 484c1–2 is rejected by Dodds, E.R., Plato Gorgias. A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary (Oxford, 1959), 272Google Scholar. Such an interpretation is unwarranted, in my opinion, also at Pl. Criti. 109b6–c4, where human beings are compared to the ποίμνια and κτήνη of herdsmen and described as κτήματα and θρέμματα of the gods.

¹⁰ The translation is by Bury (n. 6), 351.

¹¹ It should also be noted that in Ajax, a tragedy in which the act of ‘falling upon animals’ is mentioned several times (lines 42, 183–4, 299–300 and 1060–1), the verbs that describe Ajax's attack on the cattle—ἐπεμπίπτω, ἐμπίτνω and the simple πίπτω constructed with πρός plus accusative—are almost identical with the verb used in line 782 of Antigone. However, the noun that indicates the animals is either μῆλα or ποῖμναι and never κτήματα—even though those animals were indeed ‘possessions’ of the Achaeans.

¹² This emendation—tentatively proposed by Brunck (n. 4), 54—has been recently accepted by Gibbons, R. and Segal, C., Sophocles: Antigone (New York, 2003), 145–6Google Scholar.

¹³ See e.g. Kitzinger, M.R., The Choruses of Sophokles’ Antigone and Philoktetes (Leiden, 2008), 46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴ So e.g. Jebb, R.C., Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments with Critical Notes, Commentary and Translation in English Prose. Part 3: The Antigone (Cambridge, 1900 ³), 146Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Donaldson, J.W., The Antigone of Sophocles in Greek and English (London, 1848), 196Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Donaldson (n. 15), 196 (‘Love, you who, by falling upon those who are prostrate, vanquish them and claim them as yours as if by right of ownership’). A Lucianic passage in which Hera claims that Zeus is ὅλως κτῆμα καὶ παιδιὰ τοῦ ἔρωτος (Dial. D. 9[6].3) is sometimes cited as a parallel. In it, however, κτῆμα is not proleptic: Zeus's adulteries testify to his already established subordination to Eros. It should be noted that in all the passages in Antigone in which a word is used proleptically—listed by Griffith, M., Sophocles: Antigone (Cambridge, 1999), 205Google Scholar in the note on lines 474–6—the term in question is not a bare noun, like κτήμασι, which serves as a complement of the verb, but a predicative adjective that agrees with a noun or a pronoun and that clarifies the result of the action described by the verb.

¹⁷ Jebb (n. 14), 145.

¹⁸ Griffith (n. 16), 258. No more persuasive appears the proposal, favoured in the LSJ, to interpret κτήμασι as a metonymy for the wealthy, since, instead of emphasizing the extent of Eros’ power on humankind, it limits it to a specific social group.

¹⁹ Cairns, D., Sophocles: Antigone (London, 2016), 86Google Scholar.

²⁰ On the concepts of κέρδος and ἄτη in the play, as well as on its reflection on the nature of ὄλβος and εὐδαιμονία, see Cairns (n. 19), 81–8.

²¹ ‘Mutuality of being’ is the expression adopted by M. Sahlins, What Kinship Is – And Is Not (Chicago, 2013) to describe kinship ties, be they established natally or post-natally. A similar use of the word κτῆμα can be found in a passage of Plato's Phaedrus, in which Socrates describes the father, mother, relatives and friends of an ἐρώμενος as his dearest possessions (τῶν φιλτάτων τε καὶ εὐνουστάτων καὶ θειοτάτων κτημάτων, 239e3–4).

²² See Parry, H., The Lyric Poems of Greek Tragedy (Toronto, 1978), 132–3Google Scholar.

²³ Benardete, S., ‘A reading of Sophocles’ Antigone: II’, Interpretation 5 (1975), 1–55Google Scholar, at 45 (repr. in id., Sacred Transgressions: A Reading of Sophocles’ Antigone [South Bend, IN, 1999], 51–106); the emphasis is mine. The first two sentences of the antistrophe run as follows (791–4): σὺ καὶ δικαίων ἀδίκους | φρένας παρασπᾷς ἐπὶ λώβᾳ· | σὺ καὶ τόδε νεῖκος ἀνδρῶν | ξύναιμον ἔχεις ταράξας (‘You wrench just men's minds aside from justice, doing them violence; it is you who have stirred up this quarrel between men of the same blood’). Lines 791–2, according to Benardete, provide the pendant to the opening phrase of the stasimon—Ἔρως ἀνίκατε μάχαν. Benardete's interpretation of κτήμασι has been ignored by more recent scholars, even by those who mention his remarks on the stasimon as a whole. Cairns (n. 19), 177 n. 94 offers a list of passages in the Antigone in which κτήματα is used in reference to non-material possessions but does not include line 782.

²⁴ Benardete (n. 23), 45 n. 102.

²⁵ According to Fritz, K. von, ‘Haimons Liebe zu Antigone’, Philologus 89 (1934), 19–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar (repr. in id., Antike und moderne Tragödie [Berlin, 1962], 227–40), in focussing exclusively on Eros the chorus glaringly misunderstand Haemon's concern for Creon. However, as Lloyd-Jones, H., ‘Review of K. von Fritz, Antike und moderne Tragödie’, Gnomon 34 (1962), 737–47Google Scholar, at 740 has rightly pointed out, Haemon's silence on his feelings for Antigone does not mean that ‘love plays no part whatsoever in determining [his] conduct in the play’.

²⁶ Kitto, H.D.F., Form and Meaning in Drama (London, 1956), 167Google Scholar. See also Griffith (n. 16), 18.

²⁷ See lines 1155–71. The phrase the Messenger uses to describe Creon's offspring in line 1164—θάλλων εὐγενεῖ τέκνων σπορᾷ—recalls Haemon's language in lines 703–4.

²⁸ Cairns (n. 19), 88 (emphasis in the original).

²⁹ The irony of the Messenger's words is highlighted by Cairns (n. 19), 177 n. 94.

³⁰ See e.g. Parry (n. 22), 123; Segal, C., Tragedy and Civilization: An Interpretation of Sophocles (Cambridge, MA, 1981), 198Google Scholar; and van Nes Ditmars, E., Sophocles’ Antigone: Lyric Shape and Meaning (Pisa, 1992), 97Google Scholar. For a contrasting view, see Burton, R.W.B., The Chorus in Sophocles’ Tragedies (Oxford, 1980), 117Google Scholar.

³¹ Goldhill, S., Sophocles and the Language of Tragedy (Oxford, 2012), 85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.