Sophocles Antigone

Guiding Questions

Just a note: These Guiding Questions keyed into assignments are important. Among other things, they're to prepare you for exam essays, but they're also meant to assist with your learning more broadly. More on Guiding Questions on the Syllabus.

Antigone 1 (for class, 24-Aug)

From what you've read so far of Sophocles Antigone, which character do you think makes the most convincing case for whatever she or he is making a case for? Explain. Which character do you think is making the least convincing case? Explain.

Keep in mind that this, as with all Guiding-Question study prompts, is an exercise not just in brainstorming but in critical thinking. We'll share our thoughts when we meet.

Antigone 2 (for class, 26-Aug)

Think back to the chorus that begins with these lines:

Numberless wonders
terrible wonders walk the world but none the
match for man. . . . (Sophocles, Fagles translator, The Three Theban Plays, Penguin. Antigone p. 76)

That's from the first stasimon — more on that later. For now, I'd like you to brainstorm what those lines mean, especially in context. How is "man" (thus the translator; a better translation of the Greek might have been "humankind") "a wonder," indeed, a "terrible wonder"? How does that relate to the action of the play? Does it relate to the play? Does it even need to?

Stage Directions (translation notes)

Please note that all stage directions in any translation of this or any ancient play are added by the translator. None of our ancient plays will have had stage directions — something to keep in mind. (Often, speakers on stage will provide commentary that amounts to stage direction. Also, later comedy would include indications that a chorus was supposed to enter and perform at various points, but that lies outside the focus of this course.)

Text Access

Sophocles. The Three Theban Plays. Trans. Robert Fagles. Penguin Classics. New York: Penguin Books, 1984.

Background

SOPHOCLES: ca. 496-ca. 406 BCE. Athenian tragic playwright, successful and popular.

Some Biographical Data

While I'm usually very leery of emphasizing biographical data when interpreting literature, Sophocles' life, or rather, what we're told about it, seems to offer something of a counterpoint to the "Sophoclean pessimism" that the Theban plays (Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus) are notorious for — lines like, "Not to be born is best" (Oedipus at Colonus). Here are just a few tidbits:

He had a pet snake. (OK, so it was a bit more complicated than that)
He worshiped the god of health, Asclepius. (Hence the snake)
He lived to about the age of 90. (Maybe the snake helped?)
He had many friends
He liked to party
Our sources say that he was very fond of sex. Plato in the Republic says that Sophocles in old age welcomed impotence — it freed him from the misery of lust
Over the course of his career, he was by far the most successful of all ancient Greek tragic playwrights: more victories than the others (18), tons of super good plays. Never once did he fail to win either first or second place. (In later centuries, Euripides, Sophocles' younger contemporary, would become the most read of the three major Athenian tragic poets)
In old age, he was sued by his grandson, also named Sophocles, who was seeking to be named guardian of his grandpa. The old man, rather than argue his case in conventional style, simply went before the jury and recited from memory the "Praise of Athens" chorus from his play, Oedipus at Colonus. The jury found for the grandpa. Or so we're told. . .

For more on Sophocles' biography, visit this Greek and Roman mythology site at the University of Pennsylvania.

Play

The Antigone was produced in 442/1 (probably!).

It belongs to a group of three plays, Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, that go together as a story, but do not represent a unified trilogy.

In terms of story order, the sequence is:

Oedipus the King (Oedipus, king of Thebes, suffers terrible reversals and a fall from power).
Oedipus at Colonus (Oedipus, now a wandering beggar, undergoes a transformation in fulfillment of his destiny).
Antigone (Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, has returned to Thebes, where she places the law of the gods above that of humans).

But in terms of order of composition, the order is:

Antigone 442/1 BCE.
Oedipus the King some time after 429.
Oedipus at Colonus around 406.

In other words, Antigone, though last in story order, was first in order of composition and production. We're reading the plays in chronological order of composition to trace Sophocles' development as a tragic poet and his development of themes pertaining to the larger story.

Mythological Backstory

Further background can be found in the study guides for Oedipus the King and to Oedipus at Colonus.

The larger tale revolves around one Oedipus, king of Thebes, a city in Greece. But Oedipus becomes king only after an extraordinary series of events that would mark him for life. While king, he suffers additional setbacks that can only be described as tragic.

It all starts even before Oedipus is born. Laius, king of Thebes and Oedipus' father, has been warned by the god Apollo that if he were to have a son, that son would kill him. Laius and his wife, Queen Jocasta, therefore decide to do away with the newborn babe. They order a shepherd to bring the child to a remote place and to leave it there to die. Pitying the helpless child, the shepherd hands it over to another shepherd, who brings it to his master and mistress, respectively, King Polybus and Queen Merope ("ME-rō-pee"), both of Corinth, another city in Greece. The royal couple happily adopt it, as they are childless, and name the baby "Oedipus," which translates as "Swollen-Foot," from a deformity caused by the baby's feet having been pierced by a pin.

(Why pin the baby's feet? The idea seems to be that the infant, after being exposed to the elements, might otherwise have been able to crawl away and escape death. However slim the chances of anything like that happening, this detail of the pinned feet at least helps explain the baby's name.)

Soon after reaching manhood, Oedipus hears from a drunk that his parents aren't who he thinks they are. Understandably confused, Oedipus travels to Apollo's place of prophecy, the Delphic Oracle, to learn the truth. There, the god, instead of bringing clarity to the question of Oedipus' parentage, makes things arguably worse by revealing to Oedipus that he'll kill his father and marry his mother. Horrified, Oedipus decides never to return to Corinth, where he thinks his true parents are to be found.

Where to go from there? For reasons not entirely clear, Oedipus ends up taking the road to Thebes, his actual birthplace. Well, sure they're clear: He's walking into his fate, right? And fate is inescapable! Anyway, en route, Oedipus kills an old man (guess who!) at a point where three roads meet. Oedipus then arrives in Thebes, where he rids the city of the evil Sphinx. In gratitude, the Thebans make him their king, since someone (guess who!) has just killed the last one. Oedipus also receives the hand of Queen Jocasta — his mother! — in marriage. The couple have two boys and two girls, children who are, for Oedipus, both offspring and siblings.

That was all backstory to Sophocles' Oedipus plays; we've now reached the point where the action of the play Oedipus the King begins. In the course of that play, Oedipus finally learns the truth about himself and his family. That revelation drives Jocasta to suicide, and Oedipus, to self-blinding and exile, where he dies. As for Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus , it concerns itself with the blind king's death and transformation. It also brings the story home to Athens, birthplace of Sophocles and venue for the premier performances of this and all Sophocles' plays.

We're now ready to learn what happens between the death of Oedipus and the beginning of the play Antigone. Eteocles, Oedipus' younger son, has assumed the throne, only to be challenged by Polynices, the exiled older son. While in exile, Polynices collects an army to help him overthrow his brother, but they lose the war, though not before the two brothers kill each other in a duel. Creon, their uncle, now rules the land.

Creon has decreed that Eteocles may receive proper burial, but not Polynices (". . . an emergency decree, they say, the Commander [Creon] / has just now declared for all of Thebes"). Why that decree? In brief, it's a kind of punishment meted out to the already dead Polynices, for his treasonous rebellion. Not to receive a proper burial was a thing much dreaded in ancient Greek culture.

For the rest of the play's plot, I'll let you figure hat out for yourselves. . . .

Background: Historical-Political

The Antigone, like Sophocles' two other plays in what we'll call his Oedipus cycle (not trilogy), treats themes resonating with realities on the ground in Athens in the mid 400s BCE.

One of those realities was that "Greece" in ancient times didn't exist as a coherent political unit under a single government. Rather, it consisted of a number of political units, many of which we'd call "city states," in ancient Greek, poleis (POH-layz, singular polis).

(The foundation of the modern Greek state dates no further back than 1830/2.)

Another of those realities, one specific to Athens, the city sponsoring this and the other two plays in Sophocles' Oedipus cycle, was that Athens itself was a radical democracy, by which is meant:

Sovereignty held jointly by citizens known collectively as the dēmos (the "people") and consisting only of adult Athenian males
Direct participation by that dēmos — in numbers, perhaps some fifteen-thousand strong — in governing
- I.e., not representative democracy, but direct participation by adult male Athenian citizens in legislative and similar functions. Athenians (mostly) didn't elect leaders. They led themselves, at least in theory.

Thus the world that the play stages — mythical kings who rule cities — is not the world that saw the birth and first production of this play. Still, Athenian tragedy tends to put the institutions of the sponsoring city (Athens) on trial, and political themes abound in Athenian tragedy, just as they do the Oedipus cycle. As Athenian politics and society was about a whole set of inclusions AND exclusions, don't be surprised if you see the following come up as concerns:

Gender. (Women were excluded from politics)
Tyranny. (In many ways, tyranny, that is, unconstitutional or unjust rule wielded by a signle person, in other words, dictatorship, could be viewed as the OPPOSITE of democracy, indeed as the very thing that threatened democracy)

And so on — what do you see happening as themes?

Characters

Antigone (an-TI-go-nee), Oedipus' daughter, betrothed to Haemon
Ismene (is-MAY-nay), Oedipus' other daughter
Creon (KREE-on), Oedipus' brother-in-law and thus the uncle of Oedipus' children
Haemon (HIGH-moan), Creon's son (betrothed to Antigone)
Tiresias (ty-REE-see-ahs), a blind seer (yes, a paradox)
Eurydice (your-RI-di-see), Creon's wife
Chorus of male Theban elders. As a group, they have much to say in the play. They also sing and dance most of it (ancient Athenian dramas were musicals)
Leader, that's a member of the Chorus, in Greek he's called the koruphaios, who is the head chorus member. His special job is to engage in dialogue with characters of the drama. Otherwise, the chorus sings or chants as a group

Persons, other stuff:

Zeus, king of the Greek gods
Laius, father of Oedipus and the king of Thebes before Oedipus. Oedipus killed him and married his wife
Oedipus (see above)
Eteocles (see above)
Polynices (see above)
The Seven against Thebes, the seven heroes, Polynices and his allies, who joined ranks to take Thebes from Eteocles and hand it over to Eteocles' brother Polynices
- Just before the action of the play, those Seven were defeated by seven Theban heroes, including Eteocles.
Ares, god of war
Dionysus/Bacchus, god of wine (and of drama) and a native son of Thebes
"And she scoops up dry dust, handfuls, quickly, and lifting a fine bronze urn, lifting it high and pouring, she crowns the dead with three full libations" (p. 80 Penguin) — this from the Sentry's speech, in which he describes the scene of Antigone burying Polynices. It's an extremely minimal burial; the libation is a drink offering honoring the dead

Additional Notes

p. 64. "Yes if you can, but you're in love with impossibility" — that's Ismene to Antigone. This idea of love or lust (the Greek is erōs, as in "erotic") as motivation for madness pervades the play. Here, the concept of erōs lies close to that of atē, the delusion that descends on one destined for self-inflicted ruin, also called atē.

p. 65. "mounting the Dirce's the banks." The Dirce (DEAR-see) was a small stream located near Thebes, the setting of this play.

p. 65. "He grappled the Dragon none can master. . . ." In myth, Thebes was closely associated with snakes/dragons. This "Dragon" seems to be Thebes itself.

p. 76. "Numberless wonders, / terrible wonders walk the world but none the match for man" — "man" here translates anthrōpos, which really means "human being," "person," not an adult, male "man." This is the famous polla ta deina chorus, what is the chorus trying to tell us?

pp. 108 ff. "Danaë, Danaë— even she endured a fate like yours. . . ." This is the 4th stasimon chorus. The chorus, addressing Antigone, sings of mythological figures whose respective fates recall that of Antigone; they are mythological examples (exempla). (1) Danaë, whose father imprisoned her and her baby son in a chest and threw it into the sea. Her father suspected that Danaë had a secret human lover, but the baby's dad was none other than the god Zeus, and the son, the future hero Perseus. This story is set in Argos, in southern Greece. (2) Lycurgus, who tried to suppress worship of the god Dionysus. Here, Dionysus imprisons him in a cave. This and the next story take place in Thrace, which borders on the norther Aegean Sea. (3) Cleopatra (a different Cleopatra, not the queen of Egypt), imprisoned by her husband's second wife, who then blinded Cleopatra's two boys, or possibly Phineus, the father, did. ". . . my child, my child" — Antigone, whom the chorus addresses.

p. 113. "Oh god, is there a man alive who knows, who actually believes" — this rapid back and forth ratcheting up the tension and the emotion is called stichomythia.

p. 118. This is from the 5th stasimon. The chorus invokes Dionysus, god of wine amd much else, to save Thebes. Dionysus had close associations with Thebes. "King of the Mysteries! / King of Eleusis, Demeter’s plain" — Eleusis was a town close to Athens and controlled by it. The mysteries of Eleusis were secret religious rituals honoring Demeter, goddess of grain, and Dionysus.

p. 118. "Bacchus" (Greek Bakkhos, from the cry, iō Bakkhe) was another name of Dionysus, who was born to a mortal mother, Semele, in Thebes.

p. 118. "the mother-city of all your frenzied women" — the "frenzied women" are the maenads, worshipers of Dionysus.

p. 118. "Castalia's running spring." The sacred spring at Delphi, in summer, home to Apollo, in winter, to Dionysus.

p. 118. "the field sown with the Dragon’s teeth!" In myth, Cadmus planted dragon's teeth in the soil. From those seeds was born the first generation of Thebans.

pp. 119-123. "Neighbors, / friends of the house of Cadmus and the kings" — this is a messenger speech. Ancient tragedy usually avoided depicting violent or difficult to perform scenes on stage. Instead, a character would enter and narrate the offstage action. Here, as often (but not always), that character is unnamed; we'll call him "messenger." This same character performs a second, very brief messenger speech p. 126.

p. 126. "CREON: And the guilt is all mine" — here, Creon frantically sings a kommos, a song of intense grief. His song is punctuated by lines spoken by the Chorus Leader and the messenger.