RIGHT OVER MIGHT?

The Antigone presents the always welcome tale of right triumphing over might. A solitary girl defies the edicts of a cruel, tyrannical king in order to bury the corpse of her brother.¹ When arrested, she bravely denounces the king to his face for his injustice and impiety.

The pious victory of Antigone is especially remarkable since hers is a most spectacularly impious family, one that is guilty of the most atro­cious crimes against the family. Her brothers have just committed fratricide, her father has committed patricide, and she herself was born of her parents' incestuous union. It is no wonder that the chorus and even Antigone herself suspect that the gods may seek to punish her for the sins of her flesh and blood (583-603, 853-71; see also 471-2, 1-3, 49­57).

in harmony, against the human, which appears as limited, blind, self-pursuing, self-deceiving and distorted” (1979, 77).

³ Jebb goes so far as to claim that “Nowhere else has the poetry of the ancient world embodied so lofty or so beautiful an ideal of woman's love and devotion” (1979, xxv).

⁴ Jebb argues that Ismene's allusion to her father's death at 49-50 is “irreconcilable” with the account of Oedipus at Colonus. Ismene says: “Consider, sister, the father of us both, how he died, hateful and infamous.” For this and other reasons, he argues that Antigone was composed earlier than the other two Theban plays (1979, xxix, xxvii-xxviii). Nevertheless, it is possible that Ismene means here that, while Oedipus won glory in Athens when he died, in his native Thebes, where the two sisters are right now, he remains “hateful and infamous.” I agree with Jebb and also with Knox that each of Sophocles' plays is “an independent whole” and “complete in itself” (1979, xxx; Knox 1964, 2).

Yet the impression that the play finally vindicates Antigone and, through her, the justice of the gods, is called into question by the anguished self-doubt that she suffers at the end of her life. Just before she is to be rescued by her fiance Haemon and spared by a contrite Creon, she commits suicide. Shortly before, Antigone reveals herself to be in the grip of agonizing doubt regarding her own justice and piety: “What justice of divinities have I transgressed? Why should I, a wretched one, still look to the gods? Whom should I call to as an ally? Since, while I have been pious, I have acquired impiety. But if, then, these things [namely, Creon's condemnation and punishment of her] are noble in the eyes of the gods, we, having suffered, will recognize that we have erred” (921—6). The fact that she then proceeds to kill herself suggests either that she believes she deserves to be punished by the gods for impiety or that she feels forsaken by gods who are indifferent to her justice and piety. If, then, the play celebrates Antigone, why does she come to such a miserable end? If the play simply vindicates her faith in the gods and their justice, why does she herself lose faith in her final vindication? Is her piety simply too weak? Is her character less heroic than it at first seems? Or are her doubts regarding her own justice reasonable?

Furthermore, the play makes clear that, even though Creon suffers a terrible fate, he is not an impious tyrant but is both genuinely devoted to the city and pious. Creon forbids the burial of Polyneices because Polyneices led a foreign army in an attempt to conquer Thebes and killed his own brother, King Eteocles, in that attempt. These are facts that Antigone never disputes. Creon insists it was the gods who saved Thebes from destruction and that the gods wish him to honor the just Eteocles by burying him and to punish the evil Polyneices by leaving him unburied.

write single, independent plays (2—4). Nevertheless, I incline to the view that, given the unifying story, the common themes, and what Jebb himself calls “the finely-wrought links of allusion” among the Theban plays, they are properly studied together (1979, xxx). On the possible dates of the production of the plays, see Winnington-Ingram 1980, 341—3; Tyrrell and Bennett 1998, 3—4. race, to taste the blood he shared with us, and to lead us into slavery” (199-202). Accordingly, when the Theban elders later wonder, upon hearing of Polyneices' mysterious burial, if the gods might have been responsible, Creon responds: “Stop before you too fill me with rage, lest you be revealed mindless as well as old. For you say things that are not to be endured, saying that divinities take thought for this corpse. Did they cover him to give him special honor, as though he were a benefactor, he who came to burn their pillared temples, their dedicated offerings, and their land and to scatter their laws? Do you see gods honoring the evil?” (280—8; see also 511—22). Creon is evidently devoted to both Thebes and the gods — and consequently the chorus supports him, even against Antigone, throughout most of the play.^[75] Even Teiresias acknowledges that Creon has always been devoted to the gods and to the city (992—4).^[76] And though Creon does respond to Teiresias's command that he spare Antigone and bury her brother by bitterly attacking him, he quickly repents of his attack and obeys the soothsayer's command. The play, then, also presents Creon as being, in his way, just and pious. Rather than presenting a clear-cut conflict between godly right and godless might, the play presents a conflict between two protagonists who, to begin with, are convinced of their own piety and justice and convinced that there are just gods who will vindicate them.^[77] And both come to unhappy ends.

The fact that Teiresias predicts that the gods will punish Creon by killing his son and that Haemon immediately dies thereafter would seem to offer conclusive proof that there are, according to the play, just gods who punish the wicked, that they clearly punish Creon, and hence that they must side with Antigone, perhaps by conferring rewards upon her in an afterlife. Yet, notwithstanding the claims of the chorus and of Creon that Teiresias is perfectly wise, the play does not clearly present Teiresias as an infallible soothsayer (1091—7; see also 1059). He fails to predict at all the death of Antigone and, it seems, the death of Creon's wife Eurydice as well (though consider 1077—9). What is more, Teiresias's prediction regarding the timing of Haemon's death — which occurs on this very day — is rather open-ended: “Know that the sun will not have completed many courses before you yourself will give back one corpse from your insides as a repayment for the dead ones” (1064—7). Moreover, the prediction that Haemon will die before long as a result of a conflict with his father is not an entirely uncanny or unreasonable prediction, if, as is possible, Teiresias has heard of the public quarrel that has just occurred between father and son, in which Haemon has threatened to commit either patricide or suicide (751—2, 760—5).^[79] It is also important to keep in mind that, according to the account given by the First Messenger, Haemon's death almost does not occur. When Haemon discovers that Antigone has committed suicide, he first tries to kill his father, and only then, when his father barely eludes his reach, does Haemon, in anger, kill himself (1220—39). Finally, while the chorus claims that Teiresias never speaks falsely (1091—4), we know from Oedipus the Tyrant, at least, that he is fallible, for he failed to solve the riddle of the Sphinx (390—8).

The intervention of Teiresias, then, does not prove definitively that, according to Sophocles in this play, the world is ruled by just gods and that it is they who punish Creon. The play invites the reader to consider the possibility that, as the First Messenger claims when announcing the death of Haemon, it is not the gods who rule the world but blind, indifferent, chance: “For fortune sets straight and fortune brings down both the fortunate one and the unfortunate one, always. And there is no soothsayer of the things established for mortals” (1158-60).¹⁰ We are left to wonder why both Antigone and Creon are brought to ruin in the course of the play and what are the causes, human or divine, of their downfall. In order to explore these questions, let us examine the play more carefully. For while the play surely inspires awe before the power of piety, it also invites us to examine the nature and the problem of piety.