1. Knox, B.M.W., The Heroic Temper (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1964Google Scholar). See also Perrotta, G., Sofocle (Messina 1935Google Scholar); Whitman, C.H., Sophocles: A Study of Heroic Humanism (Cambridge, Mass., 1951CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Diller, H., ‘Uber das Selbstbewusstsein der sophokleischen Personen’, WS 69 (1956), 70–85Google Scholar; Vickers, B., Towards Greek Tragedy (London 1973Google Scholar); Kamerbeek, J.C., The P/ays of Sophocles III: The Antigone (Leiden 1978Google Scholar).

2. The theory that the theme of the play was the confrontation between the conflicting but equally justified arguments of Creon and Antigone originated with Hegel. See Hegel’s, Philosophy of Right, tr. Knox, T.M. (Oxford 1942), 114fGoogle Scholar.; Hegel on Tragedy, edd. Paolucci, A. and Paolucci, H. (New York 1962Google Scholar). Hegel’s suggestion that there are two central characters has been widely accepted, but there has been considerable scholarly disagreement about whether the arguments of Creon and Antigone are equally justified. For a bibliography of critics who follow the ‘Hegelian’ view, see D.A. Hester, ‘Sophocles the Unphilosophical’, Mnemosyne 24 (1971), 52–54Google Scholar. For a list of works which propose that the play shows the clash between a good principle (represented by Antigone) and an evil principle (represented by Creon), see Hester, 48–52. More recently, see Winnington-Ingram, R.P., Sophocles: An Interpretation (Cambridge 1980CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Hogan, J.C., ‘The Protagonists of the Antigone’, Arethusa 5 (1972), 93–100Google Scholar, presents a view of the play as an interweaving of two plots and two protagonists: ‘a great man fallen because of a mistake of judgment and a victim and rebel who suffers for an approved cause.’

3. See, for example, Kitto, H. D. F., Greek Tragedy (3rd ed., London 1961Google Scholar); Goheen, R.I., The Imagery of Sophocles’ Antigone (Princeton 1951Google Scholar); Calder, W. M. III, ‘Sophocles’ Political Tragedy, Antigone’, GRBS 9 (1968), 389–407Google Scholar.

4. Calder (n.3 above), 390, refutes the argument that the title of the play suggests that Antigone is the central character. He also notes that a male chorus for a female central character would be unusual and problematic. Kitto (n.3 above), 124, notes that it is Haemon’s corpse, not Antigone’s, which is brought on stage in the last act; Eurydice, moreover, replaces Antigone as a focus for our sympathy at the end of the play, and her corpse is displayed.

5. Kamerbeek (n.l above), 32, curiously suggests that ‘it may be regarded as an instance of Sophocles’ discreet tactfulness that nothing is said of Antigone’s burial’!

6. In order to make the character of Antigone conform to Aristotle’s criteria for a tragic hero, critics since Hegel have felt obliged to find in Antigone a ‘tragic flaw’ which may justify her fate, a flaw such as harshness to Ismene, or rashness, or stubbornness; Knox (n.l above), 66f., 114f; Lloyd-Jones, H., The Justice of Zeus (Berkeley/Los Angeles 1971), 116fGoogle Scholar.

7. Hester (n.2 above), 20, suggests that Creon was wrong not to cast the body outside the boundaries of the polis as was in fact prescribed in Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes (1013–25 in Page’s OCT edition). “The physical presence of the remains of a traitor had a malignant effect on his country, just as the remains of a hero had a benevolent effect. The rite of casting out is not to be thought of as a gracious concession to the dead, but as the disposal of potentially dangerous material.’

8. Antigone herself laments the gods’ indifference to her plight at 921–24; and Teiresias offers no word of approval for her actions. This puzzling lack of divine support for Antigone has led Hester (n.2 above) to his conclusion that Sophocles was not interested in theology or philosophy.

9. Family affection (and family hostility) is. one of the most important motifs in the play, and is closely tied to another motif, that of friend vs enemy. Sophocles uses philos (‘beloved’, ‘loved one’, i.e. ‘kinsman’ or ‘friend’) and philia (‘affection’, ‘friendship’, ‘love’) in reference to both family members and political friends. Antigone bases her demand for Polyneices’ burial on the claims of family philia; Creon bases his rejection of burial on the claims of political philia (Polyneices was an ekhthros, ‘hated’, ‘hostile one’, ‘enemy’, of the polis). The irony, of course, is that Polyneices can justly be considered both philos and ekhthros depending on the terms of reference For a discussion of the philos-ekhthros polarity in this play, see Winnington-Ingram (n.2 above), 128–33.

10. Creon is thus making an analogy between family and state, and is suggesting that the hierarchy of the state is an extension of the hierarchy of the family. He is certainly not suggesting that family and state are antithetical units, nor is he setting himself up as the champion of the state as opposed to the champion of the family.

11. On the motif of family affection and hostility, see n.9 above. Oedipus’ family, divided and destroyed by the hostility of its members, provides a foil for Creon’s family. Of course it is Creon himself, who seeks family unity through obedience, who ironically causes the division and destruction within his own family.

12. Creon’s insistence on absolute obedience has frequently been compared to Pericles’ exhortation, as reported by Thucydides (2.37.3), that the laws of the state must be obeyed. (It is interesting that Pericles here remarks that unwritten laws too must be obeyed.) Creon has also been compared to Cleon, who said, according to Thucydides (3.37.3), that a state whose laws were bad, but inviolable, was stronger than a state whose laws were good but unenforced.

13. For an excellent discussion of the Greek concept of polls and its importance in tragedy, see Segal, Charles, Tragedy and Civilization (Cambridge, Mass., 1981Google Scholar).

14. Calder (n.3 above) reminds us that the play opens almost immediately after Polyneices’ death and that Creon’s position therefore is virtually that of a general in a war-time government.

15. Segal (n.13 above), 156: ‘Learning or being taught are among the most pervasive themes in the play.’ Segal suggests that one of the many conflicts in the play is the conflict between age and youth, and that Creon’s failure to leam is in part due to his refusal to listen to anyone younger than himself. For my comments on Creon’s ‘hierarchy’, see above, p.104. Torrance, R.M., ‘Sophocles: Some Bearings’, HSCP 69 (1965), 298fGoogle Scholar., notes that the words hamartein (‘to fail’, ‘to go wrong’, ‘to err’) and euboulia (‘soundness of judgment’, ‘good advice’) are central to our understanding of Creon’s character. See also Dawe, R.D., ‘Some Reflections on Ate and Hamartla’, HSCP 72 (1968), 89–123Google Scholar (especially 111–13). Knox (n.l above), 13–15, suggests that the Sophoclean hero is always advised by friends and family to yield, to learn, to be persuaded, but Knox thinks that Antigone, not Creon, is the recipient of this advice.

16. Haemon uses images from nature as paradigms for the wisdom of yielding, i.e. the tree that bends does not break (712–27). Creon, on the other hand, had used examples in which the natural world was cited as an adversary of man which required violent taming devices: a harsh bit breaks the spirit of a defiant horse (477f.). Through his use of imagery Sophocles thus indicates the essential nature of these two characters. Haemon approaches life with a willingness to compromise; Creon feels a need to dominate, and his reaction to a confrontation is violent opposition. (Consider the cruel punishments he proposes: stoning, burial alive, crucifixion—308f.). Knox (n. 1 above), 16, suggests that Antigone is the object of Haemon’s advice to yield!

17. Creon did not usurp the throne of Thebes; he is, moreover, a king, not a tyrant. See Jordan, B., Servants of the Gods (Göttingen 1979), 85–89Google Scholar, who points out the differences between a tyrant and an absolute, but legitimate monarch, and who analyses Creon’s virtues as a ruler. Creon is, however, a striking example of the adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely. (On his need to dominate, see n.16 above.) We might therefore say that Creon has a ‘tyrannical’ nature, using the word ‘tyrannical’ in its modern sense. It is interesting that the most common figure in the plays of the Athenian democracy is the man with a ‘tyrannical’ nature who finds himself in a position of absolute power. The dramatic situation is thus much less complex than if, for example, a man of moderate aspirations were placed in a powerful position in a democratic society. I believe that the dramatic situations and characters of fifth century Athenian tragedy are much more ‘black and white’ than most modern critics will allow. In this play, however, we have as a foil to Creon (the ‘tyrannical nature with absolute power’ figure) Haemon, who emphasises the need to consider the opinions and wishes of all citizens when making laws. Haemon is the voice of democracy, representing an alternative course of action to Creon’s insistence that might is right.

18. It is one of the many ironies of the play that Antigone, who seems to welcome the role of solitary resister, is in fact not alone in her opposition to Creon, whereas Creon does not have the support of the people he claims to represent. Knox (n.l above), 32, suggests that isolation is the mark of the Sophoclean hero, and that Antigone is a lonely figure. Yet it is Creon who says that Antigone is the lone and solitary opponent of his decree (508 and 656; Knox uses both passages to support his argument); surely this is an example of irony. Again and again the very characteristics which Knox claims make Antigone a tragic hero are in fact more truly apparent in Creon. (Creon had originally proposed public stoning as punishment for attempted burial of Polyneices’ corpse, but after Antigone had been captured, he ordered her to be buried alive. Might his change of mind have been prompted by his awareness that he, not she, was isolated from public sympathy and by his desire to make her suffer a physical isolation?)

19. φρovεῑv can also mean ‘to be sane’; see LSJ s.v. φρovέω 1.2. For other occurrences of φρovεῑv, see n.21 below.

20. On the theme of perverted sacrifice, see Vickers (n.l above), 539: ‘In allowing [Polyneices’] body to become rotten, food for animals, Creon is reversing the process of civilisation, man’s triumph over the hostile forces of the environment, a triumph which has been celebrated in the great first stasimon.’ See also Segal (n.13 above), 159: ‘Creon violates the two ritual acts which establish the boundaries between man, beast, and god: sacrifice, effecting an upward mediation between man and god; burial, distinguishing between man and beast.’

21. φρóvησov: cf. φρovεῑv in 707; in 1031; τò φρovεῑv in 1348 and 1353.

22. Though the chorus never turns away from Creon, it is not supportive of his decree; see my comments on lines 211–16 (below, p. 111). Similarly, the chorus sympathises with Antigone’s position, but does not approve of her wilfulness. The chorus’ expressions of sympathy, but not approval, help to create in the audience an ambivalent attitude towards Creon. This ambivalence is discussed later in my paper.

23. Knox (n.l above), 67–75, and Vickers (n.l above), 540, maintain that because Creon here yields to necessity and admits his error, he therefore lacks the ‘heroic stubbornness’ (Knox, 68) which characterises Knox’s Sophoclean hero. Hogan (n.2 above), 96, however, dispules this view, and suggests that we sympathise with Creon’s recognition of his error: ‘Surely the audience is “with” Creon as he leaves [to free Antigone]; in a race against time and his own folly he has become an underdog to whom our sympathy is ever more firmly extended.’

24. Had Creon chosen first to rescue Antigone and then to bury Polyneices, rather than the reverse, might he have saved the lives of Haemon and Eurydice? Creon’s choice has been the topic of many scholarly articles. See, for example, Margon, J.S., ‘The Death of Antigone’, CSCA 3 (1970), 177–83Google Scholar.

25. Kamerbeek (n. 1 above), 201f. The word ἄτη also occurs four times in the third choral ode, where Kamerbeek calls it a ‘central concept of this whole tragedy’. See also Dawe (n.l5 above), 112: ‘It seems then to be no accident that the Ate ode stands in the physical, as it does at the spiritual, centre of Antigone.’

26. Foley, H.P., ‘“The Female Intruder” Reconsidered: Women in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and Ecclesiazusae’, CP 77 (1982), 3Google Scholar: ‘In tragedy men like Jason or Creon in the Antigone are devastatingly punished both by the loss of public success and by the loss of the very oikos-related interests that they initially neglected or under-valued… Oikos and polis are mutually defining oppositions. Order in one sphere is inextricably related to order in the other.’

27. The chorus refers to Creon as ‘a new ruler in new circumstances’ (156f).

28. Demosthenes, De Falsa Legatione 246–50, used lines 175–90 as an example of an attitude that should be expected of a statesman. Even Winnington-lagram (n.2 above), 123, will admit that Creon ‘does not come too badly out of his first appearance’.

29. Cf. Antigone 757: ‘You wish to speak, but you never wish to listen.’ Cf. also Creon’s words. Ant. 666.

30. Hester (n.2 above), 19–21 and Appendix C, provides the ancient evidence for both burial and non-burial of traitors, and reviews modern interpretations of the legitimacy of Creon’s decree. As Hester concludes, there is ample evidence to allow arguments either for or against legitimacy, but is a legal quibble which focuses primarily on fifth century Athenian practice really relevant to the play? ‘The dramatic requirements of the plot compel the exposure of the body near Thebes’ (Hester, 20); perhaps we need not look beyond these dramatic requirements.

31. Cf. Linforth, I.M., ‘Antigone and Creon’, UCPCP 15.5 (1961), 190Google Scholar. Creon must think that their remark at 211 is critical of him because his response is to warn them not to side with his opponents (219). On the other hand, McDevitt, A.S. (‘Sophocles’ Praise of Man in the Antigone’, Ramus 1 [1972], 152–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar), although stating that the chorus ‘submits reluctantly’ to Creon’s will and ‘wants no active part in the policing of the decree’ (154), interprets the first stasimon of the play as an indication that the chorus, i.e. the Theban public, unequivocally supports Creon and denounces Antigone’s burial of Polyneices; see also his more recent statement of his position in ‘The First Kommos of Sophocles’ Antigone’, Ramus 11 (1982), 134Google Scholar. The chorus’ firm support, according to McDevitt, thus encourages Creon to persist in his erroneous identification of his own will with the will of heaven.

32. Vickers (n.l above), 529; Knox (n.l above), 95; Kamerbeek (n.l above), 97 (on lines 453–455). Creon speaks of his edict as nomos, ‘an enactment’, ‘law’ (449, 481), but Antigone uses the term kerugma (8, 454), which refers to a decree announced by the voice of a herald. Creon himself mentions ‘announcing’ (κηρύξας), rather than ‘writing’ the edict (192, 203, 447).

33. Kamerbeek (n.l above), 82: ‘In the use of deinos here the whole gamut of meaning of the word is to be perceived: fearful, awful, dangerous; powerful, skilful; wonderful, strange.’

34. The perpetrator of the ‘first burial’ has been a point of considerable scholarly debate. For a defence of the position that the gods were responsible for the first burial, see McCall, Marsh, ‘Divine and Human Action in Sophocles: The Two Burials of the Antigone’, YCS 22 (1972) 103–17Google Scholar; Jordan (n.17 above), 92–101, maintains that the gods played a role in the second burial as well.

35. He resists the truth as much as Oedipus does.

36. Wiltshire, S.F., ‘Antigone’s Disobedience’, Arethusa 9 (1976), 29–36Google Scholar, explains convincingly that Antigone is not the ‘archetypal practitioner of civil disobedience’ which some scholars have suggested she is. She is not trying to bring about political change; she objects personally to the one specific decree about her brother’s burial. Of course in defending the validity of religious tradition and attacking Creon’s legislation, she unintentionally enters the sphere of pubiic policy. There is no clear-cut division in this play between public and private spheres (polls and olkos). See Foley (n.26 above), 1 and n.3: ‘The history of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. in Athens involved a continual struggle by the state to intrude into what were formerly private matters [cf. Knox (n.l above), 77f.]. The burial of a traitor is problematic precisely because it is not unambiguously public or private.’

37. Here again the interests of polis and olkos are mutually and ambiguously interrelated.

38. See nn.9 and 36 above.

39. Creon tried to keep his family (especially Haemon) separate from Oedipus’ family (especially Antigone), but ironically he united Haemon and Antigone in death. Consider the irony of 750, 760f. and 1240f.

40. When Creon wishes to insult Haemon, he calls him a woman’s slave (756) and ‘lower than a woman’ (746).

41. Xenophon Oeconomicus 7.30; Thucydides 2.45. For recent bibliography on the position of women in Athenian society, see Foley, H.P., ‘The Conception of Women in Athenian Drama’, in Reflections of Women in Antiquity (New York/London 1981), 127–68Google Scholar. Her article contains an excellent discussion of the dialectical relation between olkos and polis; and she concludes that the simple equation female:oikos :: male:polis does not hold on the Greek stage.

42. Shaw, M., ‘The Female Intruder: Women in 5th Century Drama’, CP 70 (1975), 255–66Google Scholar, assigns the term ‘female intruder’ to the women of Athenian drama who step outside of the private world of the oikos and intrude into the public (and therefore male) sphere. Their assumption of a ‘masculine’ role threatens the men in the drama because it is a disturbing inversion of the norm.

43. Ismene is the ideal woman, as Haemon is the ideal man. Much of the tension and dramatic interest in the play is created by Sophocles’ development of antithetical ‘pairs’. In addition, of course, family dissension is a major motif.

44. It is ironic, of course, that Antigone’s only surviving male kin is Creon.

45. See n.18 above.

46. Antigone’s scholarly defenders have had a difficult time trying to explain away Antigone’s cruelty to Ismene. Knox (n.l above), 65, for example, suggests that Antigone’s harsh ness is in fact a ploy to save Ismene.

47. Earlier Creon refused to entertain the idea that the gods had buried Polyneices, because he wanted a human opponent.

48. Foley (n.41 above), 162, remarks that the ‘female intruder’ is usually punished and thus the cultural norm is implicitly reasserted. A woman may be used by a dramatist to challenge or expose the failings of a man in power, but she herself cannot occupy a position of authority. Once the man is exposed and the situation remedied, the woman must be removed from public notice.

49. I find it odd that Knox and other scholars would criticise Creon for realising his error and changing his ways (cf. n.23 above), but not perceive Antigone’s sudden self-pity and emotional plea as unheroic. However Hogan (n.2 above), 97 and n.13, suggests that Antigone’s ‘humanity is more credible if she fears death, and the audience will pity her the more for this human reaction’.

50. Sophocles need not have killed off Antigone. In Euripides’ Antigone, she did not die but lived on as Haemon’s wife and bore him a son (Aristophanes’ Hypothesis to Antigone; cf. Schol. Ant. 1351).

51. McDevitt (n.31 above, 1982), 136ff., argues that the chorus’ sympathy is shallow, and its words (817ff.) are inappropriate to her situation. I think, however, that its sympathy for her plight—a very painful death, at a young age, in defence of religious tradition—is quite real, but is counterbalanced by its revulsion at her assertive, intractable, unfeminine behaviour. Its reaction to Antigone is thus ambivalent.