Antigone

Not to be confused with Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone.

In Greek mythology, Antigone was a daughter of Oedipus and his mother Jocasta, and the sister of Ismene, Polynices and Eteocles. She is remembered for burying her brother Polynices against the order of King Creon of Thebes, a deed that cost her her life.

Family

Oedipus, king of Thebes, unknowingly married his mother Jocasta, and they had four children: Antigone, Ismene, Polynices and Eteocles (Apollodorus 3.5.8; some writers made the children’s mother a second wife, Eurygania). When the truth came out, Jocasta hanged herself and Oedipus blinded himself and was driven from the city (Apollodorus 3.5.9).

In Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone leads her blind father through Greece in his exile and stays with him until his death in the grove of the Eumenides at Colonus near Athens, where Theseus receives him. Ismene joins them there with news from Thebes. At the end of the play Antigone asks Theseus to send her back to Thebes, hoping to stop the coming war between her brothers (Oedipus at Colonus 1769–1772). Apollodorus (3.5.9) gives the same outline: Oedipus came with Antigone to Colonus and died there.

The War over Thebes

According to the most popular version of the story, Eteocles and Polynices agreed to rule Thebes in turn, a year each. When Eteocles refused to give up the throne, Polynices went to Argos and returned with an army led by the Seven Against Thebes. (Apollodorus, 3.6.1, knows both this version and one in which Polynices ruled first and handed over to Eteocles.) In the war that followed, the two brothers killed each other in single combat (Apollodorus 3.6.8). Their uncle Creon, Jocasta’s brother, became ruler of the city.

Euripides tells the war differently in his Phoenician Women: there Jocasta is still alive during the siege, kills herself over the bodies of her sons, and the blinded Oedipus is sent into exile by Creon only afterwards, with Antigone as his guide; Creon also forbids the burial of Polynices and tells Antigone that Haemon waits to marry her (Phoenician Women 1586–1638).

Antigone and Creon

Creon ordered that Eteocles be buried with honour and that the body of Polynices, who was now treated as a traitor, be left unburied. In the closing scene of Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes (lines 1005–1078), a herald announces this decree, and Antigone declares that she will bury her brother whatever the city says; many scholars think this scene was added after Aeschylus. Apollodorus (Library 3.7.1) says that Antigone stole the body of Polynices and buried it in secret, that Creon himself caught her, and that she was entombed alive. Adrastus, the one Argive leader to escape, fled to Athens and begged for the burial of the dead, and Theseus marched on Thebes and buried them.

The most detailed version is Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone. Her sister Ismene refuses to help her, and Antigone buries Polynices herself. When she is caught, she tells Creon that she follows the unwritten laws of the gods, which are higher than his edict. Creon’s son Haemon, who is engaged to Antigone, pleads with his father to relent, but Creon refuses and Haemon storms out. Antigone is walled up alive in a rock tomb.

The seer Tiresias warns Creon that the gods are angry, and he finally gives way. By the time he reaches the tomb, Antigone has hanged herself. Haemon, found beside her body, spits in his father’s face, lunges at him with his sword and misses, and then kills himself (Antigone 1231–1239), and Creon’s wife, Queen Eurydice, takes her own life when she hears the news. Creon is left alone and broken, and the chorus ends the play by saying that good sense is the most important part of happiness and that proud men learn wisdom only through suffering.

In Sophocles she buries Polynices not once but twice: the guards uncover the body, and she is caught when she returns to cover it again. When Creon questions her she does not deny the deed.

In another version (Hyginus, Fabulae 72), Antigone and Argia, the wife of Polynices, together laid his body on the pyre of Eteocles at night. Caught by the guards, Argia escaped, but Antigone was taken to Creon, who handed her to his son Haemon, to whom she had been betrothed, to be killed. Haemon, in love with her, disobeyed, hid her among shepherds and told his father she was dead; she bore him a son, who, grown to manhood, came to Thebes for the games and was recognised by Creon from the mark that all of the dragon-born race carried on their bodies. Creon refused to pardon Haemon even at Heracles’ request, and Haemon killed Antigone and himself; Creon then gave his daughter Megara to Heracles in marriage.

Other figures named Antigone

Antigone, a daughter of Eurytion, king of Phthia, was the first wife of Peleus and the mother of Polydora (Apollodorus 3.13.1).

A third Antigone, a daughter of Laomedon of Troy, dared to rival Hera in beauty (in later tellings by boasting of her hair) and was turned into a stork by the goddess (Ovid, Metamorphoses 6.93–97; Servius on Aeneid 1.27).

See Also: Oedipus, Jocasta, Ismene, Polynices, Eteocles, Creon, Seven Against Thebes