¹ I would like to thank Su Braund and Helene Foley for their comments on an earlier draft, as well as discerning audiences at Oxford, Brown, Columbia, Yale, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and UCLA.

² Knox, B. M. W., The Heroic Temper (1964) 72.Google Scholar Less plausible motives are giving Antigone time to relent (Knox 72, citing 888, which is however surely rather an eschewal of responsibility: cf. 889; in collective stoning there is no individual responsibility), and baulking at stoning a kinswoman (Jebb in his Commentary). See also Kitto, H. D. F., Form and Meaning in Drama (1956) 166.Google Scholar

³ Cf. 807 with 939, and 932.

⁴ Seaford, in JHS cvii (1987) 107.Google Scholar

⁵ Burton, R. W. B., The Chorus in Sophocles' Tragedies (1980) 132.Google Scholar The most recent discussion is by Sourvinou-Inwood, C. in BICS xxxvi (1989).Google Scholar

⁶ See esp. Errandonea, I. in Mnem. li (1923) 180–201Google Scholar; Emerita xx (1952) 108–21; Sofokles (1958) 95–108; Bowra, C. M., Sophoclean tragedy (1944) 104 f.Google Scholar; Goheen, R. F., The imagery of Sophocles' Antigone (1951) 64–74Google Scholar; Müller, G., Sophokles Antigone (1967) 213–8Google Scholar; Winnington-Ingram, R. P., Sophocles, an interpretation (1980) 98–109Google Scholar; Segal, C., Tragedy and civilisation: an interpretation of Sophocles (1981) 182–3.Google Scholar

⁷ Of surviving titles note S. Akrisios, Danae; E. Danae; A. Lykourgeia; Polyphrasmon Lykourgeia (467 BC); S. Phineus A, Phineus B, Tympanistai. And cf. my remarks below on the imprisonment of Kleopatra.

⁸ FGH 3 F 10; Paus, ii 23.7 writes of an underground building over which was Danae's bronze thalamos; cf. also schol. Hom. Il. xiv 319; a white-ground lekythos published by I. Jucker in Antike Kunst Beiheft 7 (1970) 47–9 shows ‘Akrisios’ sitting on the tomb of ‘Perseus’! cf. S. Akrisios fr. 61 (Brein, in AAHG xxvii (1974) 249Google Scholar). Until about 760 BC almost all children in Athens were inhumed within the family's domain, sometimes under the housefloor.

⁹ Cf. e.g. E. Su. 1063 πὸσει γὰρ συνθανοῦσα κείσομαι, Hel. 837, Alc. 365 ff., 897–9; A. Ag. 1446, Cho. 904, 894 f. (with Garvie ad loc); Anth. Pal. vii 604; Peek, W., Griechische Versinschriften I 1522Google Scholar; Ach. Tat. iii 10. The ambiguity is exploited at S. Ant. 1224–5, 1240.

¹⁰ 1659, 1671 . . . στόμα γε σὸν προσπτύξομαι. cf. e.g. S. Ant. 1237 . . . παρθένῳ προσπτύσσεται.

¹¹ Schol. Stat. Theb. xi 371, and in general Steiner, G., Antigones (1984) 157 ff.Google Scholar

¹² Seaford, in CQ xxxv (1985) 318–19.Google Scholar

¹³ On female quarters in Classical Greek houses see Walker, Susan in Cameron, A. and Kuhrt, A. (edd.), Images of women in antiquity (1983) 81–91.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Cf. A. Sept. 1031–2 and S. Ant. 501. Cf. modern case studies of the continuation of incest over generations: e.g. Raphling, D. L.et al., ‘Incest: a genealogical study’, in Archives of General Psychiatry xvi (1967) 505CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Steele, B. F. and Alexander, H. in Sexually abused children and their families (ed. Mrazek, P. B. and Kempe, C. H., 1981) 230–1.Google Scholar

¹⁵ 869–71; cf. 793–4 (in a hymeneal hymn to Ἔρως: Seaford, in JHS cvii (1987) 108Google Scholar).

¹⁶ As it does even at S. Ant. 890 (see Ellendt Lexicon Sophocleum).

¹⁷ Euripides' Kreon (Pho. 1658) threatens to bury Antigone in the same grave as Polyneikes, and in the version preserved by Apollodoros (Bibl. iii 7.1) he actually does so.

¹⁸ Cf. Seaford (see n. 12) 319.

¹⁹ Recent detailed discussions are by Szlezák, T. A. in RhM cxxiv (1981) 108–42Google ScholarMurnaghan, S. in AJP 107 (1986) 192–207.Google Scholar A. L. Brown in his recent commentary fails to notice this coherence, and rejects the lines as ‘rubbish’.

²⁰ El. 165, 961–2; cf. Ant. 917–18.

²¹ If we suppose that the theme was borrowed from the Antigone, then this appropriateness helps to explain the borrowing.

²² Brought to this conclusion by consideration of the theme in general, I am reassured to find that it was arrived at presumably by a different route by Schenkel in the last century, albeit thereafter ignored. But I do not know what Schenkel took the passage to mean.

²³ See E. El., and esp. Seneca Ag. 997–1000 (even here she is not to be imprisoned outside the land); or perhaps Seneca was influenced by the corrupted text of Soph.

²⁴ S. Ant. 1203–4 καὶ τύμβον ὀρθόκρανον οἰκείας χθονὸς χώσανρες, S. El. 760 ὅπως πατρῴας τύμβον ἐκλάχῃ χθονός.

²⁵ See esp. vs. 774, 885, 888, 891, 920, 944, 1068, 1100.

²⁶ Presumably with Oiax: Jahn, O. in Hermes ii (1867) 232.Google Scholar At A. cho. 487 Elektra says that she will bring χοὰς γαμηλίους to her dead father (i.e. at her marriage).

²⁷ Frr. 119, 120–1, 131–2 Warmington (cf. fr. 125).

²⁸ Motive-index offolk literature (1966) ns. T 381, 382.

²⁹ The golden bough VII 1, ch. 2. Cf. the father, ‘hiding’ his daughter in the shrine, after her ‘licentiousness’, in the aetrological myth of the puberty rites at Mounychia [Suda S. Ἔμβαρός εἰμι]—a point I owe to Paula Perlman.

³⁰ fr. 473a R; Hygin. Fab. 84.

³¹ Apollod. Bibl. ii 1.5; Ov. Her. xiv (esp. vs. 3 ff. clausa domo teneor); Hor. Odes. iii 11.45.

³² 1.39.3 Ἀλόπης μνῆμα . . . ἀποθανεῖν ἐνταῦθά φασιν ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς Κερκυόνος.

³³ Pherekydes (n. 8 above) uses the word κλείσας; Simonides PMG 543 vs. 10–12 mentions the bronze of the chest and the darkness within it: the larnax of the myth has a lid (LIMC s. Danae). A cruel variation on the theme is the story of Skylla, who after betraying her father to her lover is drowned by her father by being tied to the front of a ship (Apollod. Bibl. iii 15.8;) TrGF vol. 2 (adesp.) F 8m).

³⁴ For Ilia as a Vestal Virgin see Serv. Aen. vi 778 f.; Cic. De Div. i 20.40. For Rhea Silvia see refs. below.

³⁵ D. H. A.R. i 77; Plut. Rom. 4.

³⁶ Plut. Rom. 3; D. H. A.R. i 78 f.; Strabo v 3.2 (229); Livy i 4; Justin Epit. xliii 2.

³⁷ A recent discussion is by Mary Beard in JRS lxx (1980), 12–27.

³⁸ Koch in RE VIII A, 2 1750 f.

³⁹ Plut. Numa 10; Plin. Ep. iv 11.6.

⁴⁰ D. H. A.R. ii 67.4; Bömer in RE xxi, 2 1984 ff.; cf. Plut. Numa 11.6.

⁴¹ Plut. Numa 10, Mor. 286 f; Cass. Dio ap. Zonar, vii 8.7. Athenians thought that their ancestors punished an unchaste daughter by walling her up in a house with a horse (Aesch i 182)—a point I owe to Victor Bers and to Adele Scafuro.

⁴² See most recently Sutton, D. F., Two lost plays of Euripides (New York 1987) 85–7.Google Scholar

⁴³ Konon (FGH 26 F 1) says κατακλείει, the papyrus. hypothesis (P Oxy. 2455 fr. 14) κλείσας. Other sources are Apollod. Epit. iii 24; Phot, and Sud. s.v. Τενέδιος ἄνθρωπος; Apost. 16.25; (and see n. 42).

⁴⁴ The only examples known to me of a male enclosed by himself in a chest in the sea are (a) the incestuous Oedipus (Hygin. Fab. 16), (b) when the women take power at Lemnos (i.e. a myth of reversal) and Thoas is so treated by his daughter Hypsipyle: Burkert, W., Homo necans (English translation 1983) 191.Google Scholar also Adonis, offspring of an incestuous union, enclosed in a chest. Larissa punished her incestuous father Piasos by trapping him in a wine-jar (Nic. Damasc. fr. 19; Strabo xiii 3.4).

⁴⁵ And vice-versa: Poseidon buries his sons in the earth for raping their own mother (D.S. v 55.6–7).

⁴⁶ Plut. Mor. 297 ef; Schol, and Tzetz. ad Lykophr. Alex. 232 ff.

⁴⁷ Myth. Grace. Westermann i 345.

⁴⁸ For an ethnographic example of enclosure in the parental home as a symbol of incest see Lévi-Strauss, C., The raw and the cooked (translated 1970) 64.Google Scholar Edith Hall draws my attention to Genesis 19.30–8, where Lot commits incest with his daughters in the unusual location of a cave.

⁴⁹ Apollod. Epit. ii 4; Hygin. Fab. 253.

⁵⁰ Apollod. Bibi. ii 4. 1; Pi. fr. 248 Sn.

⁵¹ Kambitsis, J., L'Antiope d'Euripide (Athens 1972)Google Scholar: main sources for the myth are schol. A.R. iv 1090; Apollod. Bibl. iii 5.5; Hygin. Fab. 7 and 8; Anth. Pal. iii 7; Propert. iii 15.11–42.

⁵² Frr. 13–4, 23–5 Warmington (with fr. 25 cf. A.R. 4.1095).

⁵³ The stress in Ovid's account (Met. vi) on the uncanny darkness goes well beyond the needs of deceiving Cinyras: note esp. the association of darkness and shame at 448–51 and 454–6.

⁵⁴ e.g. Ov. Met. vi III; cf. Apollod. Bibl. iii 5.5.

⁵⁵ Hygin. Fab. 204; Ov. Met. ii 590 ff.; Serv. Georg, i 403; Mythogr. Vatican, i 98; ii 39; for darkness and shame cf. n. 53 above.

⁵⁶ It is perhaps worth adding that illicit sex at nocturnal festivals includes brother-sister incest: Ps. Plut. De Fluv. vii 2; 17.1; 21.

⁵⁷ JHS xciii (1973), 36–49.

⁵⁸ JHS c (1980), 22–37.

⁵⁹ There is an example in S. Ant. itself (795); cf. also A. Ag. 742; S. frr. 157, 474 (Pelops and Hippodameia); etc.

⁶⁰ Hieron. Rhod. ap Suda s. Ἀναγυράσιος.

⁶¹ See above n. 51 for refs. For the detail on which the following argument about Dionysos is based see Seaford, in JHS cviii (1988) 118–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶² Frr. 179, 203N²; Webster, T. B. L., The tragedies of Euripides (1967) 205–6.Google Scholar

⁶³ Dio Chrys. XV 9 (ii 234 Arn.); cf. E. fr. 179N².

⁶⁴ e.g. E. Ba. 36 (and cf. 38 with 33); Segal, C., Dionysiac poetics and Euripides' Bacchae (Princeton 1982)Google Scholar ch. 4; Anton. Lib. Met. 10; etc.

⁶⁵ Seaford, in JHS cviii (1988) 125–6.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ The imprisonment seems introduced into E. Ba. as a traditional element (Dodds ad 443–8); and cf. Apollod. Bibl. iii 5.1; Naevius fr. 46 Warmington; Dodds' Introduction xxxii f.

⁶⁷ Apollod Bibl. iii 5.1; Hygin. Fab. 132, 242; Serv. Aen. iii 14; Ov. Fasti iii 722; schol. Lucan i 575; Sutton, D. F. in RSC xxiii (1975) 356–9Google Scholar; etc.

⁶⁸ Fundamental discussion of the trilogy: Deichgräber, K., Gött. Nachr. 1938/1939, I (3) 231–309.Google Scholar A recent account: West, M. L. in BICS xxx (1983), 63 ff.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Kypria, p. 31.36–7 Davies; Lykourgos as Theban king: RE xiii 2433.

⁷⁰ A. Kiso, The lost Sophocles ch. 3; note esp. Ov. Met. vi 422–676; Accius fr. 647 Warmington.

⁷¹ Hygin. Fab. 4 ‘Ino Euripidis’; cf. Ennius fr. 52 Jocelyn. E. fr. 421N² may refer to the final isolation of Athamas in a dark cave (cf. Lykourgos).

⁷² See n. 68 above. cf. also the Furies escorted off in a torchlit procession at the end of A. Eum. to their dwelling in the earth, where they will be offered wedding sacrifices (805–6, 835, 1004).

⁷³ Apollod. Bibi. iii 15.3; D.S. iv 43; Hygin. Fab. 19; schol. Ov. Ib. 265, 271. A recent discussion of the myth is by Bouvier, D. and Moreau, Ph. in RBPhH lxi (1983), 5–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁴ So Winnington-Ingram (see n. 6) 106. That the scholiast on this passage fails to see this, despite knowing other details of the myth, is irrelevant. Kleopatra's imprisonment seems to have been a result of Phineus taking another wife (cf. Antiope, Ino, Philomela), and may in one version have been unto death.

⁷⁵ This suggests that it is in general not illegitimate to adduce other unmentioned details of these paradigmatic myths. But cf. Stinton, T. C. W. in Greek tragedy and its legacy: essays presented to D. J. Conacher (edd. Cropp, M. J.et al., 1986).Google Scholar

⁷⁶ The fact that in Soph.'s version it is the stepmother, rather than the father (as in one version), who does the blinding is irrelevant to my argument.

⁷⁷ That is how διωρυγμένοις (D.S. iv 43.3) is generally taken.

⁷⁸ The comparison with a frisky horse (985) is a hymenaial image for the girl to be tamed in marriage.

⁷⁹ cf. also Pherekydes FGH 3 F 38; Apollod. iii 5.6 ‘she returns to her father’. Timanthes ap. Eustath. Il. 13430.60 (quoted Radt p. 266) seems to imply that by veiling herself in Aesch. Niobe was choosing a life ‘as if belonging to the night or underground’.

⁸⁰ Recent attempts are by Winnington-Ingram (see n. 6) 110–16, and Segal (see n. 6), 201–6.

⁸¹ On the Dionysiac nature of the procession see e.g. Graf, F., Eleusis und die orphische Dichtung Athens in vorhellenistischer Zeit (1974) 51 ff.Google Scholar

⁸² Winnington-Ingram (see n. 6, 113–4) makes much of what he sees as a sinister connotation in the epithet ‘fire-breathing’. But this simply derives from the association of stars with the torches in the night-time dance.

⁸³ W. Burkert believes (Homo necans, Engl. transl. 1983, 277) that the procession followed the path of the searching Demeter.

⁸⁴ Sokolowski, F., Lois sacrées des cités grecques Supplement (Paris 1962) 15.42.Google Scholar Depiction (?) on the Niinnion tablet (G. E. Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries (1961), fig. 88).

⁸⁵ Lactantius Div. Inst. Epit. 18 (23). 7; Clem. Alex. Protr. ii 12.2 (p. 11.20 St.). With the tossing of torches mentioned by Lactantius. cf. Ar. Ran. 341 (of Iakchos).

⁸⁶ Ael. Aristid. xix, p. 422 Dindorf (quoted by L. Deubner, Attische Feste 84).

⁸⁷ Indeed, to restore that civic peace signalled by Dionysiac all-night festivity which the chorus in the parodos desired to follow the end of the fighting (147–54).

⁸⁸ see G. Thomson on A. cho. 935–71.

⁸⁹ Seaford, in CQ xxxi (1981) 256–7.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ See e.g. Mylonas, G. E., Eleusis and the Eleusinian mysteries (1961), 147–9.Google Scholar

⁹¹ See e.g. Conacher, D. in Phoenix xxi (1967), 92–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹² 1746 ‘in the dark I will cover him with earth’, reading Hermann's σκότια.

⁹³ Hygin. Fab. 72; P. Oxy. 3317; E. fr. 177N² (cf. 178); Hypoth. S. Ant. (Aristophanis); Scodel, R. in ZPE 46 (1982) 37–42.Google ScholarXanthakis-Karamanos, G.. in BICS xxxiii (1986) 107–11Google Scholar, fails in my view to show that P. Oxy. 3317 is not Euripidean, true though it is that the latter part of Hygin. Fab. 72 cannot have been represented (as opposed to prophesied) in Eur's play (pace Scodel; cf. fr. 176).

⁹⁴ To other exx. of apparently undramatised myths mentioned in the footnotes add those of Psamathe (Ov. Ibis 573 f. with schol.) and Leukothoe (Ov. Met. iv 190–255), each buried alive by her father after sex with Apollo.

⁹⁵ This is no more than a strong impression. In general, a statistical investigation into whether tragedy favours certain themes from the whole body of myth might be rewarding. Other exx. of female captivity not discussed here are from E. Cretans, Protesilaos (? cf. Aulus Gellius xii 10.5; E. fr. 648N), Andromeda (Webster, Monuments illustrating tragedy and satyr-play 154 f.; Accius fr. 71W).

⁹⁶ On the gender implications of tragic space see Williamson, M. in JACT Reviews iii (1985) 16–20Google Scholar; Taplin, O. in Omnibus vii (1984) 13–5Google Scholar; Zeitlin, F. in Representations xi (1985) 63–94 (esp. 71–4)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Easterling, P. E. in BICS xxxiv (1988) 15–26Google Scholar; cf. Foley, H. P. in Foley, H. P. (ed.) Reflections of women in antiquity (1981) 127–68Google Scholar; J.-P. Vernant, Myth and thought among the Greeks (Engl. transl., 1983), ch. 5.

⁹⁷ These may be the daughters of Eleuther there, who, we hear of in a brief notice in Suda (s.v. Μελαναιγίς), were driven mad by Dionysos.

⁹⁸ In Euripides, women, and sexuality (ed. Powell, Anton, Routledge 1989) 151–76.Google Scholar