Sophocles Antigone

Journal Prompt (for 23-Jan class)

Thinking back to the lines of the chorus, "Numberless wonders, / terrible wonders walk the world but none the match for [human kind]" (p. 76, discussion below), how does that relate, in your view, to the action of the play? Or does it relate — what do you think?

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Text Access

Sophocles. The Three Theban Plays. Trans. Robert Fagles. Penguin Classics. New York: Penguin Books, 1984. (Available via bookstore.)

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. Here, just a few tidbits:

• He had a pet snake
• He worshiped the god of health, Asclepius
• He lived to about the age of 90
• 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 of the misery of lust
• 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 come in lower than first or second
• 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 produced 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:

1. Oedipus the King (Oedipus, king of Thebes, suffers terrible reversals and a fall from power).
2. Oedipus at Colonus (Oedipus, now a wandering beggar, undergoes a transformation in fulfillment of his destiny).
3. 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:

1. Antigone 442/1 BCE.
2. Oedipus the King some time after 429.
3. 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.

Background: Mythological

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

Oedipus was king of Thebes, a city in Greece. Laius, Oed's father, had been warned by Apollo that if he would have a son, that son would kill him.

Oedipus ended up killing his father and marrying his mother, by whom he had four children — chidren and half siblings: daughters/sisters Antigone and Ismene, and sons/brothers Eteocles and Polynices. Oedipus died in exile. Eteocles, his younger son, eventually assumed the throne.

Bur Polynices, the exiled older son, challenged Eteocles over the kingship. The two fought and killed each other. Creon, their uncle, now rules in their stead.

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? Read the play. . . .

Characters include

• Antigone, Oedipus' daughter, betrothed to Haemon
• Ismene, Oedipus' other daughter
• Creon, Oedipus' brother-in-law and thus the uncle of Oed's children
• Haemon, Creon's son (betrothed to Antigone)
• Tiresias, a blind seer (yes, a paradox)
• Eurydice, 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 had joined ranks to take Thebes from Eteocles and hand it over to Eteo's brother Polynices
  • Just before the action of the play, those Seven were defeated by seven Theban heroes, including Eteocles, defending the city
• 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

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" didn't exist as a coherent political unit under a single government. Rather, it included a whole set of relatively small city-states, called poleis.

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 by a citizenry, known collectively as a demos (the "people") consisting of adult Athenian males
• Direct participation by that demos — in numbers, perhaps some fifteen-thousand strong — in governing
  • I.e., not representative democracy but direct participation by any and all enfranchised Athenians in legislative and similar functions. Athenians didn't elect leaders. They all led themselves, at least in theory, by attending assemblies of the entire demos.

As Athenian tragedy tended to put the institutions of the sponsoring city (Athens) on trial, political themes abound in Athenian tragedy, and so 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, unconstitutional or unjust rule excised by an unusually power individual within the city, could be viewed as the OPPOSITE of democracy, indeed as that which threatened democracy)

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

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. 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 to save 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, god of wine.

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. "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.