Antigone

Antigone is a play by Sophocles.

Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus, the former king of Thebes. Her brother, Polyneices, has been killed attacking Thebes, and the new king, Antigone's uncle Creon, has decreed that anyone who buries Polyneices will face death penalty.

Obeying all her instincts of love, loyalty, and humanity, Antigone defies Creon and dutifully buries her brother's corpse. Creon, from conviction that reasons of state outweigh family ties, refuses to commute Antigone's death sentence. By the time Creon is finally persuaded by the prophet Tiresias to relent and free Antigone, she is dead. She has killed herself in her prison cell.

Creon's son, Haemon, who is also Antigone's fiancé, kills himself out of love and sympathy for the dead Antigone, after which Creon's wife, Eurydice, kills herself out of grief over these tragic events. At the play's end Creon is left desolate and broken in spirit. In his narrow and unduly rigid adherence to his civic duties, Creon has defied the gods through his denial of humanity's common obligations toward the dead.

The play thus concerns the conflicting obligations of civic versus personal loyalties and religious mores.