In Greek mythology, Antigone ( ; ) is a Theban princess and a character in several ancient Greek tragedy. She is the daughter of Oedipus, king of Thebes; her mother/grandmother is either Jocasta or, in another variation of the myth, Euryganeia. She is a sister of Polynices, Eteocles, and Ismene.[Roman, L., & Roman, M. (2010). ] The meaning of the name is, as in the case of the masculine equivalent Antigonus, "in place of one's parents" or "worthy of one's parents". Antigone appears in the three 5th century BC tragic plays written by Sophocles, known collectively as the three Theban plays, being the protagonist of the eponymous tragedy Antigone. She makes a brief appearance at the end of Aeschylus' Seven against Thebes, while her story was also the subject of Euripides' now lost play with the same name.
In Sophocles
The story of Antigone was addressed by the fifth-century BC Greek playwright
Sophocles in his Theban plays:
Oedipus Rex
(1825–1828), National Museum, Warsaw.]]Antigone and her sister
Ismene are seen at the end of
Oedipus Rex as Oedipus laments the "shame" and "sorrow" he is leaving his daughters to. He then begs Creon to watch over them, but in his grief reaches to take them with him as he is led away. Creon prevents him from taking the girls out of the city with him. Neither of them is named in the play.
Oedipus at Colonus
Antigone serves as her father's guide in
Oedipus at Colonus, as she leads him into the city where the play takes place. Antigone resembles her father in her stubbornness and doomed existence.
She stays with her father for most of the play, until she is taken away by Creon in an attempt to blackmail Oedipus into returning to Thebes. However,
Theseus defends Oedipus and rescues both Antigone and her sister who was also taken prisoner.
At the end of the play, both Antigone and her sister mourn the death of their father. Theseus offers them the comfort of knowing that Oedipus has received a proper burial, but by his wishes, they cannot go to the site. Antigone then decides to return to Thebes.
Antigone
In her eponymous play, Antigone attempts to secure a respectable burial for her brother
Polynices. Oedipus's sons,
Eteocles and Polynices, had shared rule jointly until they quarreled, and Eteocles expelled his brother. In Sophocles' account, the two brothers agreed to alternate rule each year, but Eteocles decided not to share power with his brother after his tenure expired. Polynices left the kingdom, gathered an army and attacked the city of Thebes in the war of the Seven against Thebes. Both brothers were killed in the battle.
King Creon, who has ascended to the throne of Thebes after the death of the brothers, decrees that Polynices is not to be buried or even mourned, on pain of death by stoning. Antigone, Polynices' sister, defies the king's order and is caught.
Antigone is brought before Creon, and admits that she knew of Creon's law forbidding mourning for Polynices but chose to break it, claiming the superiority of divine over human law, and she defies Creon's cruelty with courage, passion, and determination. Creon orders Antigone buried alive in a tomb. Although Creon has a change of heart, due to a visit from soothsayer Tiresias, and tries to release Antigone, he finds she has hanged herself. Creon's son Haemon, who was engaged to Antigone, kills himself with a knife, and his mother Queen Eurydice also kills herself in despair over her son's death. She had been forced to weave throughout the entire story, and her death alludes to Moirai.
Other representations
In the oldest version of the story, the burial of Polynices takes place during Oedipus' reign in Thebes, before Oedipus marries his mother, Jocasta. However, in other versions such as
Sophocles'
Greek tragedy Oedipus at Colonus and
Antigone, it occurs in the years after the banishment and death of Oedipus and Antigone's struggles against Creon.
Seven Against Thebes
Antigone appears briefly in Aeschylus'
Seven Against Thebes.
Euripides's Lost Play
The dramatist
Euripides also wrote a play called
Antigone, which is lost, but some of the text was preserved by later writers and in passages in his
Phoenissae. In Euripides, the calamity is averted by the intercession of
Dionysus and is followed by the marriage of Antigone and Hæmon.
Antigone also plays a role in the Phoenissae.
Appearances Elsewhere
Different elements of the legend appear in other places. The 4th century tragedian
Astydamas wrote a play about Antigone that is now lost. A description of an ancient painting by
Philostratus III (
Imagines ii. 29) refers to Antigone placing the body of Polynices on the
funeral pyre, and this is also depicted on a
sarcophagus in the Villa Doria Pamphili in
Rome. And in Hyginus's version of the legend, apparently founded on a tragedy by a follower of Euripides, Antigone, on being handed over by Creon to her lover Hæmon to be slain, is secretly carried off by him and concealed in a shepherd's hut, where she bears him a son,
Maeon. When the boy grows up, he attends some funeral games at Thebes, and is recognized by the mark of a dragon on his body. This leads to the discovery that Antigone is still alive.
The demi-god
Heracles then intercedes and unsuccessfully pleads with Creon to forgive Hæmon. Hæmon then kills Antigone and himself.
[
] The intercession by Heracles is also represented on a painted vase (circa 380–300 BC).
[
][
]
Genealogy
Gallery
File:Oedipe et Antigone, Johann Peter Krafft (1809).png| Oedipe et Antigone by Johann Peter Krafft, 1809
File:Oedipus and Antigone by Franz Dietrich.jpg| Oedipus and Antigon by Franz Dietrich
File:Oedipus and Antigone (Eckersberg).jpg| Oedipus and Antigone by C. W. Eckersberg (1812)
File:Per Gabriel Wickenberg - Oedipus och Antigone.jpg| Oedipus and Antigone by Per Wickenberg (1833)
File:Ribelles-edipo y antigona.JPG| Edipo y Antigona by José Ribelles (circa 1800)
File:The Plague of Thebes.jpg| Oedipus and Antigone by Charles Jalabert (1842)
File:Emil Teschendorff - King Oedipus.jpg| Oedipus and Antigon
File:Antoni Brodowski - Oedipus and Antigone - Google Art Project.jpg| Oedipus and Antigon by Antoni Brodowski (1828)
File:Antigone And The Body Of Polynices - Project Gutenberg eText 14994.png| Antigone and the body of Polynices (Project Gutenberg)
File:Baschet, André Marcel - Ödipus verurteilt Polyneikes - 1883.jpg| Ödipus (mit Ismene und Antigone) verurteilt Polyneikes by Marcel Baschet (1883)
File:Character sketches of romance, fiction and the drama (1892) (14784688512).jpg| Antigone and Ismene
File:Lytras nikiforos antigone polynices.jpeg| Antigone in front of the dead Polynices by Nikiforos Lytras (1865)
File:Sébastien Norblin Antigone et Polynice.JPG| Antigone donnant la sépulture à Polynice by Sébastien Norblin (1825)
File:Oedipus and Antigone - Charles Thévenin - ABDAG000101.jpg| Oedipus and Antigone by Charles Thévenin, Aberdeen Archives, Gallery & Museums Collection
Cultural references
In modern times, Antigone is invoked as a symbol of heroism.
The character of 'Ani' in
True Detective season 2 is named after Antigone.
Adaptations
The story of Antigone has been a popular subject for books, plays, and other works, including:
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Antigone, one of the three extant Theban plays by Sophocles (497 BC406 BC), the most famous adaptation
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Antigone, a play by Euripides (c. 480406 BC) which is now lost except for some fragments
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Antigone (1631) ,
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Antigona, opera by Tommaso Traetta, libretto by Marco Coltellini (1772)
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Antigona, opera by Josef Mysliveček, libretto by Gaetano Roccaforte (1774)
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Antigone (1841), settings of the choruses by Felix Mendelssohn as incidental music for a performance of Johann Jakob Christian Donner's translation of Sophocles
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Antigone, opera by Arthur Honegger (1892–1955), libretto by Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
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Antigonae (Salzburg 1949), opera by Carl Orff (1895–1982)
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Antigone (1944), French adaptation of Sophocles's play by Jean Anouilh (1910–1987) performed during the Nazi occupation of Paris
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"Antigone-Legend", for soprano and piano (text by Bertolt Brecht), by Frederic Rzewski (1938–2021) and presented as a play in two slightly different versions in 1948 and 1951
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Αντιγόνη ( Antigone), ballet
[commissioned by the Royal Ballet, 1959] by Mikis Theodorakis (b. 1925), 1959
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Αντιγόνη ( Antigone), opera by Mikis Theodorakis (b. 1925), 1995–96
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Antigone (1990/1991), opera by Ton de Leeuw (b. 1926)
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Antígona Furiosa (Furious Antigone), play by Griselda Gambaro (b. 1928)
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Another Antigone, play by A. R. Gurney (b. 1930)
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Antígona, play by Salvador Espriu (1939)
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"Antigone", a short story by Sheila Watson (1959)
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Tegonni, An African Antigone by Femi Osofisan (b. 1946)
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Antigone, adaptation of Sophocles's play by Peruvian poet José Watanabe (b. 1946)
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Antigone, opera by Mark Alburger (b. 1957)
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Antigone (1961), a film directed by Yorgos Javellas, starring Irene Papas.
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La tumba de Antígona (1967), philosophy work in poetry (razón poética) by María Zambrano (1904–1991)
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The Burial at Thebes (2004), by Seamus Heaney, adapted into a 2008 opera with music by Dominique Le Gendre
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Antigone, play by Mac Wellman
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Antígona Vélez (1950), adaptation of Sophocles' play by Argentine writer Leopoldo Marechal (1900–1970)
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Antigona (1960), a play by Dominik Smole
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Antigonai (2009), opera based on fragments by Sophocles and Hölderlin for three choirs and a women's trio by Argentine composer Carlos Stella
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Antigone (1948), by Bertolt Brecht, based on the translation by Friedrich Hölderlin and published under the title Antigonemodell 1948
[.
]
An English translation of Brecht's version of the play is available
[ Malina, J. (1990) Sophocles’ Antigone. New York: Applause Theatre Books]
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Antigonick, play by Anne Carson (2012) which is a free and poetic adaptation of the Sophocles play.
[Carson, A., (2012). Antigonick. (illustrated by Stone, B.). New York: New Directions.] Carson and her colleagues presented a reading of Antigonick in 2012 at the Louisiana gallery in Denmark.[ ]
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Antigone (2019), a film by Sophie Deraspe
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Arch-Conspirator (2023), a dystopian re-imagining by Veronica Roth
Analysis
In the works of
Hegel, in particular in his discussion of
Sittlichkeit in his
Phenomenology of Spirit and his
Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Antigone is figured as exposing a tragic rift between the so-called feminine "Divine Law," which Antigone represents, and the "Human Law," represented by Creon.
The Catholic philosopher
Jacques Maritain considers Antigone as the "heroine of the natural law:"
- she was aware of the fact that, in transgressing the human law and being crushed by it, she was obeying a higher commandment—that she was obeying laws that were unwritten, and that had their origin neither today nor yesterday, but which live always and forever, and no one knows where they have come from.
[ Maritain, J. (edited by Sweet, W., 2001). Natural law: Reflections on theory and practice. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press (p 26) ]
The psychoanalyst
Jacques Lacan writes about the ethical dimension of Antigone in his Seminar VII,
The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. Others who have written on Antigone include theorist
Judith Butler, in their book
Antigone's Claim, as well as philosopher Slavoj Žižek, in various works, including
Interrogating the Real (Bloomsbury: London, 2005) and
The Metastases of Enjoyment (Verso: London, 1994).
Contemporary productions
A new translation of
Antigone into English by the Canadian poet
Anne Carson has been used in a production of the play (March 2015) at the
Barbican Centre directed by Ivo van Hove and featuring
Juliette Binoche as Antigone. This production was broadcast as a TV movie on April 26, 2015.
The play was transferred to the BAM Harvey Theatre at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, running from September 24 to October 4, 2015.
[ Antigone at Brooklyn Academy of Music.]
Further reading
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Antigones by George Steiner. An examination of the legacy of the myth and its treatment in Western art, literature, and thought in drama, poetry, prose, philosophic discourse, political tracts, opera, ballet, film, and even the plastic arts.
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Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death by Judith Butler. An examination of the figure of Antigone in literature and philosophy, particularly in Sophocles and in the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Luce Irigaray and Jacques Lacan.
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Rayor, Diane J. (2011) Sophocles’ Antigone. Cambridge University Press. Translation with introduction and notes.
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Söderbäck, Fanny, ed. Feminist Readings of Antigone. New York: SUNY Press, 2010. . Including classical texts by Judith Butler, Bracha Ettinger, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and Adriana Cavarero.
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Wilmer, S. E., and Zukauskaite, Audrone, eds. Interrogating Antigone. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. . Including recent texts by Judith Butler, Bracha L. Ettinger, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray.
External links
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Antigone – a review of the Antigone myth and the various productions of her story
