JUSTICE AND THE FAMILY: THE CHALLENGE OF CREON

It is tempting to dismiss Creon's argument for punishing Polyneices' corpse since, at first glance that punishment seems simply cruel and seems to reflect a wantonly cruel nature.

By the end, Creon seems to be the villain of the play, even in his own eyes. Once he is commanded by Teiresias to bury Polyneices, Creon, after at first balking, relents and laments that he has not followed the established religious laws by allowing Antigone to bury the corpse of her brother. In this way, Creon concedes that Antigone was right to affirm that the gods — including Justice herself — demand that families be allowed to bury their dead, even if they are enemies of the city, and hence that devotion to the family take precedence over devotion to the city (1108—14, 450—70). Furthermore, by accepting the blame of the chorus and of his wife for the suicide of his son Haemon and by blaming himself for the suicide of his wife Eurydice, Creon seems to condemn himself specifically as an enemy of the family and hence of the gods.

Yet it is important to remember that throughout most of the play the chorus supports both Creon’s edict against the corpse of Polyneices and his punishment of Antigone. At the beginning of the play, they celebrate their victory over Polyneices and accept Creon’s edict pun­ishing his corpse (100—54, 211—14). It is true that, after they hear that the corpse has been mysteriously buried, they wonder whether a god might have buried it and hence wonder whether the gods may not disapprove of Creon's edict (278—9). Nevertheless, after Creon's defense of his edict, they proceed — in the absence of the king — to denounce sharply the “evil” and “ignoble” human being who violated the edict (365—75; see 385—6). When Antigone denounces Creon's edict as a violation of divine law and justice, the chorus denounces her as “savage” (471—2). The chorus praises, at least initially, Creon's argument to Haemon for executing Antigone (681—2). And even after the chorus expresses sympathy both for Haemon's defense of Antigone and for her suffering, they still criticize her, to her face, as an enemy of the goddess Justice (724-5, 801-5, 853-6). It is possible that the chorus denounces Antigone in Creon's presence because, as Antigone and Haemon contend, they fear the wrath of their king (504—7, 509, 688—700; see also 724—5). Nevertheless, the fact that the chorus also denounces the violation of Creon's edict in the second choral ode, when they are alone, and the fact that Antigone interprets the chorus's final criticisms of her as sincere suggests that the chorus is largely persuaded by Creon's defense of his edict throughout most of the play (385—6, 800—82). Moreover, Antigone herself takes the argument Creon makes seriously. While Ismene's argument challenging the wisdom of her burial of Polyneices does not shake her resolve, Creon's argument challenging her justice and piety seems to arouse in her far-reaching doubts concerning the justice and piety of her actions.

Creon's argument for punishing the corpse of Polyneices is based on the claim that this measure will strengthen the city, and on the thesis that justice means devotion above all, not to the family, but to the city. Creon is surely aware that this thesis is at odds with the traditional

understanding of the divine law, according to which justice demands that family members be permitted to bury their dead relatives regardless of their loyalty or disloyalty to the city (see 1113—14). But Creon evidently believes that, since justice cannot consist of devotion to one's family over one's city, and since the gods must be just, the traditional understanding of the divine law must be mistaken (see 280-9; 511-22).

The beginning point for Creon's argument concerning justice is the nearly fatal political crisis Thebes has just gone through, a crisis caused by the fratricidal struggle for power between Oedipus's sons, Polyneices and Eteocles. Creon prefaces the announcement of his edict by describing the political situation in Thebes to the chorus: “The gods, having shaken the affairs of the city with much tossing, have safely set them straight again. But I have sent for you, out of all, by messengers, because I know well that you always revered the might of Laius's throne, and also because, when Oedipus set the city straight and, once he perished, you still remained steadfastly loyal in your spirit to their children. Since those children, by a double fate, on a single day, per­ished, struck and smitten each, polluted each by a hand of their own flesh, I myself hold all might and the throne, in accordance with my kinship with the dead” (162—74). Creon indicates here that the prin­cipal cause of the turmoil that almost destroyed Thebes was familial strife.

Hitherto, the Thebans have evidently believed, as Antigone still believes, that the family as such is a natural unity or whole. Accord­ingly, they have based their own political unity on devotion to a family. As long as the house of Laius was united, Thebes was united by its devotion to that family. But the fratricidal strife within that family indicates that the unity of Thebes must be based on something other than the loyalty to a family. Indeed, the whole history of the royal family from Laius to the present, which Creon alludes to here, would seem to demonstrate that the family as such can never be a reliable source of unity. The attempted infanticide of Laius, the patricide of Oedipus, and the fratricides of Eteocles and Polyneices seem to show that the family is not a truly natural community, that it has no clearly shared common good, inasmuch as members of that community will, for example, kill one another, their own flesh and blood, for the sake of attaining or protecting political power.

Accordingly, rather than arguing that the Thebans should now be loyal to the new royal house of Creon, and that they should, for example, pledge their loyalty to his son Haemon, Creon goes on to argue for loyalty to the entire city and for the importance of never favoring oneself or one's family over the city.

Creon acknowledges that the city, like the family, can be torn apart by greed or ambition (see 288—303, 672—6). Indeed, in his view, a self­forgetting, patriotic love of one's city seems even less reliable a passion than love of one's family. But the city, unlike the family, can appeal to a natural human passion powerful enough to hold in check such greed or ambition — namely the individual desire for self-preservation. By pro­viding security to the citizens, the city can satisfy their powerful desire to stay alive. And by demonstrating its awesome might to the greedy and ambitious, the city can arouse in them an overpowering and salutary fear of death. For even though “Gain has often destroyed men because of the hopes it raises” (221—2), the city checks such destructive hopes by inspiring a sobering fear of death.

The key to securing the city from danger is a firm ordering of both the city and the family. As Creon later explains to his son: “There is no greater evil than anarchy. This destroys cities and overturns households. This shatters the spear of an ally and routs him. But of those who act rightly, obedience to rulers saves most bodies” (672—6). The division or faction that destroys cities thereby destroys families as well. More­over, disorder within a family — as the recent example of Oedipus's sons shows — can spread disorder to the city. Therefore, to preserve the city, which preserves us all, a forbidding and fearsome order must be maintained both throughout the city and within the family. Accordingly, Creon stresses, citizens must obey rulers, sons must heed fathers, the young must respect the old, and women must be ruled by men (see 218-22, 289-314, 324-6,473-89, 525, 578-9, 632-80, 726—48). If these conventional hierarchies are not strictly respected and maintained, chaos will ensue and ultimately sink the ship of state. The passion, then, that the city should rely on for its stability is fear, and ultimately the fear of death. If citizens seek above all to preserve themselves, they will uphold order and thereby preserve the city. On the other hand, those who cherish some goal higher than mere life - those who, for example, seek power and wealth and violate the laws to achieve such goals - threaten the whole city with destruction. We see, then, that although Creon may well be temperamentally a harsh and cruel man, there is an argument for his harshness and cruelty in terms of the common good: by inspiring fear, Creon's rule avoids anarchy, maintains peace, and hence benefits the city. ^[92]

Creon now turns to announce his edict. “Eteocles, who died doing battle on behalf of his city, having bested all with his spear, you shall cover in a grave and shall perform all the rites of purification that go to the best of the dead below. But as for his blood-brother, I mean Polyneices, an exile, who wished by fire to burn, from top to bottom, the land of his fathers and the gods of his kin, and wished to taste of the blood that he shares, and to lead the rest into slavery, it has been proclaimed to the city that this man no one shall honor with a grave or lament, but you shall leave him unburied, and see his body eaten by dogs and birds, tortured. Such is my spirit, and not ever by me shall the evil have honor before the just. But whoever is well-minded toward this city, shall have honor from me in life and death alike” (194—210).

Creon justifies his seemingly cruel edict by claiming that it will strengthen the city (191). First, the edict assures those who defend the city and risk their lives for it, as Eteocles did, that they will be honored by their grateful city after death and that they will receive the greatest rewards in an afterlife. The edict thus appeals to the citizens' desire for posthumous honor and immortal well-being, as well as to their desire for self-preservation, as a basis for their devotion to the city. However, Creon emphasizes the punishment of Polyneices more than the reward for Eteocles. The edict appeals then, above all to fear. It seeks to deter those citizens who may be tempted, out of ambition or greed or loyalty to Polyneices, to challenge Creon's rule, and plunge Thebes into anarchy, by appealing to their fear of death. For even though Polyneices is already dead, the effect of seeing his body torn and devoured by animals would seem to impress on those who behold this spectacle that Polyneices truly has been annihilated, that he truly is no more, since he will be deprived of the burial that would confer a kind of immortality on him, either in the afterlife or through posthumous honor. By punishing Polyneices in this way, Creon hopes to teach the potential enemies of the city a horrifying lesson they will never forget, a lesson in mortality. By showing them that the city can destroy them in every way, he hopes to teach them the importance of obeying the city that

ultimately criticizes his argument that justice means the devotion to one’s city over one’s family, she does not give due weight to Creon’s thoughtful analysis of the problem of deadly anarchy, which forms the basis of his argument. preserves them. Through this edict, Creon hopes to save Thebes from anarchy, and hence destruction, by appealing to the love of honor of its defenders and especially by inspiring terror in its potential enemies.^[93]

Creon adroitly stresses here that Polyneices was an enemy of the family as well as of the city (198—206). Indeed, Creon emphasizes that the Thebans or, the Cadmeians, as he elsewhere calls them, share the same blood, and thereby suggests that Thebes constitutes the true, larger family of its citizens (508). In this way, Creon suggests to the chorus that by honoring Eteocles with burial, and especially by disgracing the corpse of Polyneices, he is upholding the demands of familial piety as well as those of patriotism. Nevertheless, Creon’s edict clearly violates the established understanding of the divine law, according to which families must be allowed to bury their dead regardless of their disloyalty to the city (see 450-70, 1008-1114; but consider 211-14).^[94] It would seem to be precisely because he recognizes the revolutionary character of his edict that Creon does not consult with Teiresias, as he has been wont to do in the past, before issuing it (992—5). By honoring Eteocles, Creon is honoring a fratricide, one who has committed a grave crime against the family and who is consequently, as Creon freely admits, polluted (170—4). Therefore the standard of justice that he applies in this case is not devotion to the family but devotion to the city, for Eteocles’ fratricide is evidently eclipsed by his service to the city.

Now, Antigone challenges this elevation of the city over the family in the name of the gods. She explains her violation of Creon’s edict by declaring to him and to the chorus: “For not at all to me did Zeus proclaim these things, nor did Justice, who dwells with the gods below — they who ordain these laws among human beings. Nor did I suppose that your proclamations had such strength that a mortal being would be able to outrun the unwritten and unshakeable laws of the gods. For they are not of the present or of yesterday; they live forever, and no one knows when they appeared. I was not about to pay the penalty among the gods for these things because I feared the spirit of any man. For that I would die, I knew full well — how should I not? — even if you did not proclaim it. If before my time I shall die, I count it a gain. For whoever lives among many evils [or many evil ones], as I do, how would dying not bring a gain? So for me, at least, to meet such a doom is no pain at all. But if I had endured the dead one, who came out of my mother, to be an unburied corpse, then in those circumstances I would have felt pain. In these, however, I do not feel pain. If in your opinion I have done foolish things, perhaps it is from a fool that I draw the charge of folly” (450-70).

Antigone contends here that it is only the gods' laws that are truly binding on human beings. For only the gods' laws are truly just, only they are eternal, and only they are enforced with the threat of divine punish­ment. Since the laws of political communities are devised and enforced by mere mortals, they may be justly and reasonably ignored if they conflict with the divine laws. Now Antigone insists that Creon's edict violates divine law by forbidding her from burying her brother. Indeed she sug­gests that the gods would punish her if she did not violate Creon's edict and bury her brother. Antigone suggests that the gods are fundamentally indifferent to the political community and that they do not support the punishment of such traitors as Polyneices, but that they care most deeply about the family, for they themselves punish, after death, those who not only betray the family but who simply fail, by omission, to fulfill their duties to their family. In Antigone's eyes, the city is simply a mortal entity, but the family is eternal. As Antigone has suggested to Ismene, the family continues to exist after death, forever, in an afterlife, and the gods reward with an everlasting happiness in the company of their family those who are devoted to the family (71—7, 80—I, 89,93—7). Antigone suggests that, in the gods' eyes, it is not the city but the family that is truly sacred. Therefore humans should devote themselves to what is, in the eyes of the gods, the true community, the eternal community, of kindred flesh and blood.

Antigone's invocation of the afterlife here challenges Creon's whole argument for the importance of devoting oneself to the city. For in the light of eternity, in the light of divine rewards and punishments after death, how important is the self-preservation that the ship of state offers the loyal citizen and the death with which it threatens the disloyal one? Antigone argues that, since death is inevitable, and since there is an afterlife in which the just gods reward and punish human beings, it would be foolish to fear the threats or punishments of any merely mortal ruler. Rather, she suggests, one should strive to be worthy of the posthumous rewards of the gods. And the way to deserve such rewards is through devotion, even at the cost of one's life, to the community the gods themselves honor most — the family.

Creon, however, is not shaken here by this challenge. He seems wholly convinced that Antigone's violation of his edict is unjust and therefore that the gods cannot support her in her rebellion. For Anti­gone's belief that justice means devotion to the family over the city must, in Creon's view, destroy the city — and neither justice nor the gods can support the destruction of the city. As Creon insists earlier in the play, the gods cannot possibly regard as a good deed the destruction of a city that has always worshipped them (284—8; see also 194—206). He insists, then, that justice must consist in devotion to the city and hence that the gods must support him. To be sure, Creon does express some uncertainty about the gods' benevolence toward the city early in the play (162—3), and his failure to consult with Teiresias does suggest that he doubts the soothsayer would simply endorse his elevation of the city over the family. Nevertheless, at this point in the play at least, Creon is so insistent that the gods too believe that justice demands that devotion to the city take precedence over devotion to blood that he declares to the chorus: “Whether she is of my sister or nearer in blood than everyone who worships Zeus of my hearth, this girl and her blood­sister will not escape a most evil doom” (486—9).

The core of Creon's challenge to Antigone is his argument that the family is not a genuine whole or unity and therefore that it is simply impossible to be consistently devoted to the family. This challenge emerges in the following exchange:

Creon challenges Antigone’s belief that justice means devotion to the family by asking her a simple question: by honoring your brother Polyneices with burial, are you not honoring the murderer of your other brother? Now, Antigone could argue that by burying Polyneices, she is not honoring one brother above the other but is simply making sure that each receives the minimal honor due to any brother. But Antigone herself believes that, if justice means devotion to the family, justice demands the punishment of those who are disloyal to their family. Hence she affirms that the disloyal Ismene will be hated by the souls of their dead family and punished by the gods, and dreads that she herself would be punished if she were not loyal to her brother (93—4, 76—7, 83, 542-3, 553; 46, 450-60). Yet, Creon asks, has not Polyneices exhibited flagrant disloyalty to his family by killing his own brother? How, then, can she believe that it is just to honor him? And how can she believe that either the souls of Eteocles and her other dead family members or the gods would approve of her honoring this fratricide with a burial? Antigone can only reply by asking, “Who knows if these things are pure below?” (521). Yet she thereby leaves entirely open the question of whether or not the dead and the gods approve of her action. But if she is so uncertain, how can she be confident of the justice and piety of her actions?

Creon contends that Antigone’s own definition of justice self­destructs. If justice means devotion to the family, it is impossible for her to be just in this case, since each brother is guilty of a crime against the family. The premise of Antigone’s whole understanding of justice and piety is that the family constitutes a true unity, a natural, per­manent, and sacred whole. Antigone declares that justice means devotion to the family, that it means honoring, pleasing, and benefiting those blood relatives who are dead (76—7, 89, 559—60). Creon, on the other hand, perhaps especially impressed by the fratricidal conflict between Antigone’s brothers, stresses that the family is not a true community but rather an arena of conflict, actual or potential. In addition to speaking of the conflict between the brothers Polyneices and Eteocles, Creon cites the conflict between himself and his niece Antigone — a conflict that he, in contrast to Antigone, portrays as a family conflict (164—74, 512—20, 486—9). He, as well as the chorus, may also allude to the conflict between Oedipus and his father Laius, as well as to the bitter conflict between Oedipus and both his sons (164—9, 471-2, 853—6; see also Oedipus at Colonus, especially 335-460, 593—601, 1156—1178, 1249—1396). Creon seems to suggest that the family is not a genuine whole but rather a collection of individuals who, though related by blood, may or may not care for one another or feel devoted to one another and whose interests always stand in actual or potential conflict. Therefore it is impossible to be devoted to the family as such. One can be devoted only to particular members of one’s family. And by taking the side of one member, one is always, at least potentially, opposing another. For example, by honoring her brother Polyneices, Antigone is dishonoring and displeasing her brother Eteocles, not to mention her father Oedipus and her uncle Creon. Justice, then, cannot consist of devotion to one’s family since the family is not a true community or whole.

The Theban plays as a whole suggest that Creon is right to call into question the natural unity of the family. In Oedipus the Tyrant, we learn of the attempt by Laius and Jocasta to kill their child, of Oedipus’s killing of his father, and of his attempt to kill his mother. In Oedipus at Colonus, we learn that Oedipus's sons drove him into exile and pro­ceeded to wage war on one another, and we see Oedipus bitterly curse his sons, pray that they commit the crime of fratricide against another, and pray that they be damned for eternity after death (1348—96). But, more than any other extant play of Sophocles, the Antigone calls into question the natural unity of the family. The play opens against the backdrop of two brothers deliberately killing one another. The opening scene then presents two sisters in bitter conflict with one another, and ends with one of them expressing her hatred for the other (86—7, 93—4; but see 98—9). We later see Creon condemn his nieces to death (486—9). We then witness Creon's son, Haemon, threaten to kill his father, and later hear of Haemon's conscious attempt to kill his father, an act of deliberate, attempted patricide unique in classical Greek literature.^[95] Finally, we hear of Creon's wife, Eurydice, killing herself while cursing her husband as a killer of children (1301—5, 1312—13, 1315—16). It is impossible to read this play without a deep sense both of the dignity of the family and also of its natural fragility. One of the most obvious lessons of the play would seem to be that the ties of flesh and blood are woefully weak, since having the same blood coursing through their veins evidently does not restrain human beings from hating and killing one another.

Antigone herself has of course been aware that divisions exist within her notoriously divided family, but she has evidently refused to face the implications of those divisions for her understanding of justice. For example, although Ismene twice mentions the fact that their brothers killed one another, Antigone never mentions this fact in the course of the play (compare II-14 and 49—57 with, for example, I—IO and 21—30). Furthermore, after her bitter quarrel with Ismene, Antigone deems her sister outside the community of the family and therefore conceives of their quarrel as one wholly external to her family. Indeed, later on, Antigone goes so far as to describe herself as the last living member of the royal house of Laius, thereby forgetting or dismissing Ismene entirely (940—3; see also 69—70, 93—4, 538—9, 542—3, 546—7, 549, 557, 559—60, 876—82, 895—6; but consider 891—4). In these ways, Antigone struggles to maintain her vision of the family as a whole, larger than herself or any of its members, and devotion to which ennobles her, renders her just, and thereby renders her worthy of everlasting happiness. Nevertheless, Creon’s forceful challenge to that vision — a challenge underscored by the immediately ensuing public quarrel with her sister — evidently undermines Antigone’s confidence that she has acted justly and therewith her hope that the gods will reward her. For in her final scene in the play, Antigone is overwhelmed by doubt concerning her own justice and piety.