KREON Yes, you did! Or are we Still loved as your own, whatever we may do? The next ode describes the murderous curse in the house of Oidipous in the bold metaphor of the "blood-red dust of the gods under the earth" (if we can trust the manuscript text) reaching up to "reap" "the last rootstock of the House of Oidipous" (647-50 / 599-602). With her own hand, she struck herself below her liver, When she learned of her son's bleak end, that brought sharp wailing. 997-1011 / 929-43 The chorus, Antigone, and Kreon have a short, three-way exchange chanted in the marching meter of anapests as Antigone, escorted by Kreon's guards, exits to her underground cave in a slow, solemn procession.

After this discovery, he blinds himself and lokaste hangs herself.

/ 417ff.)

1057 / 995 Literally, "By my own experience [or, suffering] I have cause [am able] to bear witness to (your) useful (things)."

.

The prophet's opening address, "Lords of Thebes" (1050 / 988), like Antigone's last address to the leaders of Thebes (1008 / 940), in itself implies a less autocratic view of the city's government than Kreon had assumed, as he has been addressed earlier as the single "lord" of the land (e.g., 254 / 223, 319 / 2y8).41 Kreon responds to Teiresias, as before to the previous challenges, 40. The stubborn wrongDoing and deathDealing of mistaken Thinking!

Among the internal reasons alleged for viewing the lines as spurious are the apparent illogic of Antigone's argument and particularly her change of motivation for the burial from a defense of principles in 495-518 / 45070 to a highly personal and intimate connection with the family. .

Kreon, who probably reenters just as Antigone is finishing her lament, hardheartedly dismisses her mournful song as an attempt to delay the inevitable, and his brusque response deepens the pathos of her isolation (942-43 / 883-84). The phrase could suggest those "unwritten laws" that Antigone invoked at 495-518 / 450-70 and that Kreon dismissed.

There are a few passing hints earlier; see notes on 673 / 626-27,1127 /1058,1266 /1191. Sophokles heavily overdetermines the contrast between house and city by the repetition "under her own roof / in private," as the latter word, oikeion, means, literally, "belonging to the house," oikos. His narrative gives a vivid picture of the remote place, outside the city walls, where Polyneikes' corpse has been left to rot.

Creon now blames himself for everything that has happened and he staggers away, a broken man. KREON I myself know this; and my mind is confused: It's terrible to give way. Scholars may, it is true, produce useful and perceptive versions. For the first time Kreon acknowledges weakness ("my mind is confused," 1170 /1095), asks for advice, and submits to another's advice: "What must I do? The myth, told at length in Euripides' Bakkhai, is the basis of Thebes' special claim on Dionysos. . You! But in Antigone, as later in Haimon and Teiresias, he encounters motives that cannot be reduced to material gain or to his mode of reasoning.

The same storms of Her spirit, hurling The same blasts, Still possess this girl. . The care for the dead was especially the prerogative of women, and it was increasingly restricted in Athens in the sixth and fifth centuries as the democracy sought to limit the power of the aristocratic clans, but it was nevertheless widely respected.7 The Athenian institution of the public, city funeral for warriors who died in battle, established around the middle of the century, sharpened the conflict between the family's mourning and the public ceremony, and this conflict is doubtless in the play's background.8 Against Kreon's laws (nomoz) Antigone sets the "unwritten laws" that pertain to the burial of the dead, which are also the "custom-laws" (another meaning of nomoz or nomima) that have a place within every city and rest on the sanctity, as she says, of "Justice, who resides in the same house with the gods below the earth" and on the authority of Zeus himself (translation 495-501 / Greek 450-5 5 ).9 Thus, while she is so human and moving in the fragile strength of her defiance of the ruler, she has on her side the weight of religious tradition, the universal recognition of the rights of burial, and the performance of those offices for the dead that traditionally belong to women in the polis and in the family.

By such standards we ask that these translations be judged. The clans of the birds, With minds light as air, And tribes of beasts of The wilderness, and waterDwelling sea creatures — All these he Catches, in the closeWoven nets he Throws around them, And he carries them Off, this man, most 68 strophe a 380 antistrophe a 390 ANTIGONE [347-369] Cunning of all.

The Greek grammar suggests that Kreon means he himself has experienced Teiresias' "useful things/ benefits" and can testify to them. . The man who spoke in metaphors of keeping things straight and upright now finds his whole world awry: he says, "everything is twisted in my hands" (1425-26 / 1342).

The series of deaths at the end of the play, however, leaves a final impression of catharsis and an emptying of all emotion, with all passions spent.

If this is so, then Kreon would be including them in his decision ("Yes, it has been decided by you [chorus leader] and by me"), which seems less likely. Historically, it has been common practice to use Latinized forms of Greek names when bringing them into English. London, 1956. Letters, F. J. H. The Life and Work of Sophocles. But someone else Might have a good thought, also. The echo of Aiskhylos can evoke the dangerous and destructive passions of women and so point to Antigone. How does de la Rosa’s reconceived Antigone contribute to and reframe the ongoing discussion of femicide within Juárez? DRAMATIC STRUCTURE In the prologue Ismene sets out the weakness of Antigone's position. This interpretation is supported by the way it echoes Antigone's lament over Polyneikes like a mother bird when she finds that her nest and bed are empty (orphanon lekhos, 469-70 / 425) and by the fact that Antigone, like Eurydike, "curses" the perpetrator (473 / 427). flashcard sets, {{courseNav.course.topics.length}} chapters | She reiterates that she is the last of her house (compare 955-56 / 895), once more forgetting Ismene and harking back to the motif of the destruction of the entire family. 472—76 / 427-31 she moaned.

119-20 / 101-2 seven-gated Thebes The struggle over the city focuses on the defense of its seven gates.

OLYMPOS: Mountain in northeastern Greece, the peak of which is traditionally considered the abode of the gods, who are therefore called Olympians.

(5) Kreon is convinced that the reason people do what they do is for kerdos, "profit," material gain. Her death as a bride of Hades makes horribly literal what is only a convention of speaking.

And now!

.

But it is easy enough to supply Antigone's motives for returning to the body a second time, although there is no explicit evidence for these in the text: she may have felt that the guards' uncovering of the body was an indignity to 127 NOTES ON THE TEXT the corpse that she would not tolerate, or, as some have suggested, she actually wants to get caught.

It was I, I, who killed you, In my helpless misery!

1314-15 / 1232 spits in his face Perhaps this is an ironic reversal of Kreon's paternalistic urging of Haimon to "spit out" Antigone as an enemy in 702 / 653. 550 KREON You alone among the Thebans see it this way.

GUARD That may be so.

Receiving a prophecy that he will be killed by his own son, he orders the infant Oidipous exposed to the elements on Mt. In these upland plateaus of Parnassos is also the cave sacred to the Korykian Nymphs, who are closely associated with the god and are here imagined as accompanying these nocturnal processions.

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The word does not yet carry the full associations of our word "tyranny," but it does connote autocratic power, the absolute rule of a single man, and it begins to undercut Kreon's claims to represent the city as a whole. 1283 / 1205 bridal crypt of Hades. Chanting. .

The achievements of this extraordinary period include the high classical art and architecture that extol the human form (especially the male body) as the standard of beauty and a rationalistic view of religion, law, medicine, history, language, and the founding of cities, and so on, as creations of human intelligence and progress, not gifts of the gods. Some of the individual words themselves are sites of struggle between the new ruler Kreon and his series of antagonists, as he and they fight from opposite points of view to control the meaning of the language they use. He thus makes us witness the bloody violence in Antigone's cave through the eyes of the mother and wife who will soon become the instrument of completing Kreon's tragedy.

YALE CLASSICAL STUDIES E D I T E D F O R T H E D E P A R T M ENT O F C L A S S I C, This page intentionally left blank

lead horse Ares, god of war, is compared to the horse on the right-hand side of a team of horses, the position given to the strongest horse. The incest of her parents is the inverse of her nonmarriage, but it belongs to a similar failure of "normal" family life. "If I die before my time," she says in her speech of defiance to Kreon, "I count that as my profit" (508-10 / 46162).

Sophocles

843-65 / 781-805 Third stasimon (fourth ode) This ode on the invincible power of passion or desire (eros, here personified as the god Eros), following directly on the conflict between father and son, marks the rising tide of emotional violence in the play.

In the poignancy of these last, reflective moments, she finally expresses her bitterness and sorrow at her loss of marriage and children.

When woes are in our path, the briefest are the best. Antigone dismisses all calculation of personal advantage, including life itself.

So be as you decide to be—but I Will bury him. 110 1340 ANTIGONE KREON [1261-1276] Singing. ; (2) the quotations in direct discourse make this encounter very vivid; (3) the sequence of events is clear and rapid; (4) Sophokles keeps the emphasis on the interaction between father and 172 NOTES ON THE TEXT son but does so in a way that reveals its fully tragic character.

—I Am walking The last road, I am seeing for The last time The radiance Of the sun and Never again!

Ah! KREON Singing.

Chanting. Antigone buries Polynieces, knowing that the consequence will be her death. .

of Thebes and mother of Oidipous (q.v.

810 / 750 never marry this girl while she's alive Another instance of Sophoklean tragic irony: Haimon will in fact "marry" Antigone when she is no longer alive (1322-28 / 1234-41).

60. There is a lot of "sharpness" here at the end (also 1395-96 / 1309), which adds to the atmosphere of violence and suffering.

I have heard it antistrophe b Told that the pitiable Phrygian stranger, Daughter of Tantalus, Died at the Peak of Mount Sipylos—rock That grew like Ivy wound Around her Tightly till it 90 880 ANTIGONE [827-844] Stilled her, and Men say that She, melting in Rain and snow That never cease, Dissolves into Tears running Down the mountain Ridges beneath Her brow: divine Power takes Me, who am most like her, to bed. of the play, (The Greek we provide likely to be LANGUAGE AS AN ELEMENT OF STRUCTURE Antigone opens after the slaughter and fright of war have come to the very gates of Thebes but have been kept outside. I don't like a loved one who only loves with words. 877-79 I 817-18 Do you not go with glory. KREON You'll regret lecturing when your own thoughts were empty.

Offspring here is the reading of most of the manuscripts. We cannot know; the play is not psychological in this way. She is betrothed to Kreon's son, Haimon (q.v.). Some have seen here a possible indication of particular Athenian interest in the area with the founding of its colony, Thurioi, in 443/442.

Lead in the girl — The hateful thing—so she may die at once! . The first rule of Greek tragedy is it must have catharsis. ANTIGONE But I know I'm pleasing those I must please most. Tragedy, derived from the Greek words tragos (goat) and ode (song), told a story that was intended to teach religious lessons. Ismene cannot in good conscience defy the law, but Antigone does not believe the law is paramount to familial loyalty. The ode is an important part of the structural design of the play, for it answers the parodos, the first ode, which ends with Dionysos and nocturnal ritual (171-74 / 152-54). This turning of the family against itself is also the subject of the second stasimon (633-77 / 582-630). The whole passage has echoes of Haimon's lament and suicide in 1305-8 / 1224-25 as well as of Antigone's lament and curses over Polyneikes' body at 467-73 / 422-28. The text of this passage has some uncertainties, and we adopt a plausible and widely accepted emendation.