Family Values Antigone 3

HELI OS, vol.
33S, 2006 Texas Tech University Press

Sophocles Antigone and Family Values
RUSH REHM
Insofar as Sophocles tragedy impinges on contemporary consciousness,
it seems to do so through its heroine, viewed as a symbol of political
resistance. Antigone represents a strong-willed young woman who stands
up to tyrannical power and pays the price.
1
We tend to forget in this sce-
nario the deeply traditional roots of Antigones actions, the family values
to which she appealsvalues that formed an integral part of fth-cen-
tury Athenian political, cultural, and religious life. Antigone shows the dis-
astrous consequences that visit the polis of Thebes when its ruler Creon
tries to secure power by denying those values, specically the traditional
manifestations of family respect for their dead, respect that extends to
the wider human community.
As Cynthia Patterson (1998) has established, the ritual sanctity of the
family in classical Athens was viewed as crucial to the health of the wider
political community.
2
Bearing and raising legitimate children, attending
to the rituals associated with birth, marriage, and death, and overseeing
the oikos within which these activities primarily took place constituted
essential contributions to the polis.
3
Approached in terms of the ancient
notion of duties, as opposed to the legalistic notion of rights, the perform-
ance of these activities and associated rituals constituted Athenian
women politically. Rather than representing the opposite pole to the polit-
ical (or public/communitarian) sphere, as Hegel and others argue, these
family duties were part and parcel of civic life, understood in a broader
sense than the narrowly conned, Aristotelian-inuenced view that poli-
tics involves constitutional guarantees tout court.
4
The phrase family values has emerged with partisan force in recent
years, used by the political right as a rallying cry against policies they
view as threatening and reprehensible.
5
I propose to explore the impor-
tance of family values for a progressive reading of Sophocles play,
focusing on the different manifestations of those values by Antigone,
Ismene, Haemon, Eurydice, and Creon. Rather than treating these char-
acters simply as sources of quotable evidence, however, I will highlight
187
the important places referred to in the text (and available to Sophocles
audience) where the family values expressed by these characters take the
stage. These locations include Creons palace, which, via the skn
faade, provides the plays setting; the palace interior, which lies immedi-
ately offstage; the distant areas important to the action, including the
plain where Polyneices body lies exposed, the cave that entombs
Antigone, and the city of Thebes (its walls, public altars, gathering
places, the site of rumor and the rumblings of resistance); and, nally, the
theatrical space itself, the fth-century theater of Dionysus.
6
This spatial
awareness will allow us to engage the family values of Antigone in a more
theatrically vital way, allowing the plays keen interest in proper and
improper placement to emerge with fuller force.
7
In a brief conclusion, I
suggest some ways in which Sophocles treatment of family values might
help us rescue the idea from the dominant political rhetoric of our day.
At rst (and second) glance, the myths of Thebes and the blighted
house of Laius appear to have little to do with family values, and much to
do with their opposite. Patricide, incest, suicide, curses among parents
and offspring, internecine conict between siblings, and the apparent
collapse of the domestic sphere altogether inform the story.
8
In the
opening dialogue of Antigone, the two sisters dwell on this unsavory back-
ground, where the name Oedipus evokes the archetypal anti-family:
ANTIGONE: Which of the evils that come from Oedipus
Is Zeus not bringing to fulllment even while we still live?
No, there is nothing painful or full of destruction
Or shameful or dishonorable, which I have not seen
As part of the evils that beset you and me.
........................................................................
ISMENE: Ah me. Keep in mind, my sister, how our father
Died, hated and notorious,
As the result of crimes he himself detected,
Battering out his own two eyes with his own hands;
Second, how his mother and wife, two names in one,
Mutilated her life with the twisted noose;
Third, how our two brothers on a single day
Slew one another, bringing on wretched death
In common, working together hand to hand.
Now, in turn, consider the two of us, left all alone
How much worse we will perish if, defying the law,
We violate the decision or the power of the tyrant.
(Ant. 26, 4960)
9
HELI OS 188
In a nutshell, Ismene seems to say that their family has been so bad that
the two surviving sisters had best obey whatever political authority they
confront.
And yet, as she states on several occasions, Antigone feels compelled
to bury Polyneices precisely because he is her brother. Although traitor to
Thebes, Polyneices represents to his sister the ties of the natal family, the
group into which Antigone has been thrown.
10
Her compulsion to per-
form funeral rites for his corpse takes precedence over all her other duties
and responsibilities, from obeying political authority to building a family
of her own. In her apparent recantation (90415), Antigone goes so far
as to say that the need of burial per seeven for an imaginary husband
or childwould not justify her rebelling against Creons edict.
11
Rather,
the fact that she cannot replace her brother (both her parents being
dead), that time cannot challenge or change the inherited bonds of her
natal family, provides the grounds for her actions:
If my husband had died, I could have had another,
And a child by another man, if I had lost one,
But with my mother and father down below in Hades
No other brother ever could be borne for me.
(90913)
It has to be Antigone who buries Polyneices, for no one else will do.
Indeed, no one else will do it.
Antigone adheres to an uncompromising and exclusivist notion of
family, understood in the strictest endogenous sense. How could (can)
loyalty to such intimate kin, dened completely by inherited ties of
blood, translate into meaningful political action that extends beyond this
small, pre-selected community? In addressing the question, let us begin
by identifying the basic position the play takes towards Creons decree
and Antigones resistance to it:
(1) traditional family values, understood in terms of unwritten laws,
demand that Antigone bury Polyneices, regardless of topical political
decisions to the contrary (45057, 51921, 111314);
(2) both Creons son Haemon and the citizens of Thebes nd fault
with the decree that denies Polyneices burial and condemns Antigone to
a living death for trying to perform it (5049, 688700, 74345, 755,
11001, 111112, 1270);
(3) the gods categorically reject offerings from Thebes because the city
has purposely kept the dead from burial (9991022, 107071);
12
they
189 REHMSophocles Antigone and Family Values
also condemn Creons punishment (living entombment) for Antigone
(106676); and,
(4) Creons decisions put a plague on the city [nosei polis] (1015),
proving disastrous to all concerned (1080, 1177), a conclusion shared by
Creon (126569, 1319, 133946) and the Chorus (125960, 134753).
13
Although not necessarily the focus of our moment-to-moment the-
atrical attention, these points seem incontrovertible by the end.
14
The
nal image of Creoncaught between his dead son in the orchestra
and his dead wife revealed on the altar of Zeus herkeios (via the ekkuk-
lma)
15
leaves no doubt that his family has been destroyed and that
things are not well with the polis.
Let us now turn to the place and manner in which family values arise
in the play, beginning with those that inform Antigones resistance. The
initial stage action involves the daughters of Oedipus going outside the
palace to discuss the decree prohibiting Polyneices burial. The physical
action of leaving the private world of the palace for the public (and par-
adoxically safer) space represented by the orchestra demonstrates the
impossibility of segregating public from private, political from familial,
in any simple binary fashion.
16
Through the (ostensibly) furtive dia-
logue between Antigone and Ismene, the opening scene publicizes the
crisis brought on by Creons decree and the need to choose a course of
action in response to it.
17
By the end of the scene, Antigones departure
out an eisodos (heading for the offstage space where Polyneices corpse
lies exposed) and Ismenes return to the palace via the skn door signal
the different decisions each has taken. This pattern recurs when the
Guard leads Antigone back down the eisodos into the orchestra after she
has performed burial rites for Polyneices (37685), and Ismene emerges
from the palace weeping for her captive sister (52632). It occurs again
after Creon has imprisoned both sisters within the palace (57779):
Antigone returns to the stage under guard (8045) and is led out an
eisodos to her rocky prison (88588, 93143) somewhere in the distance,
while Ismene remains inside the palace, never to be heard from again in
the play.
18
As represented by the heroines determination to bury Polyneices,
family values in Antigone cannot operate within the closed domestic
sphere. Antigones loyalty to her brother and her kin requires that she
break the bonds of the palace/oikos both literally and guratively. She
must act on her beliefs by going to the plain where the corpse lies
unburied, and she must pay for her deance by being entombed in a
rocky cavern. The plain and the cave mark the two most important (and
HELI OS 190
vividly evoked) distant spaces of the play,
19
and we should consider
briey how Sophocles characterizes each of them.
Creons decree outlawing Polyneices burial (198210) makes clear
that the dead body is exposed within the citys borders, so that the The-
bans can contrast the ofcial treatment of the two sons of Oedipus:
Leave the body unburied, to be eaten / and ravaged by birds and dogs,
shameful to see [idein] (2056).
20
As far as we can tell, however, no
Theban freely takes the opportunity to view this desecration. That
dubious privilege is reserved for the watchmen that Creon orders to
enforce his decree; the terms skopoi (215), episkopoi (217), and hmerskopos
(253) emphasize the act of spying on, looking at, or watching
over.
21
When the Guard returns with Antigone as his captive, he
addresses Creons question, How was she [Antigone] seen? (kai ps hor-
atai, 406), by describing the whirlwind that swept across the plain, blot-
ting out the sky, forcing the guards to shut [their] eyes and keep out this
god-sent plague (theian noson, 421), anticipating Teiresiass assertion
that Creons edict plagues (nosei, 1015) the city, noted above.
22
When
the wind drops, Antigone is seen (horatai [423], answering Creons
query at 406) standing over the body like a mother bird over her nest,
orphaned of its young (42327).
23
Momentarily reversing Creons vision of Polyneices corpse savaged by
vultures, the Guards bird simile suggests an analogy between the family
values of the natural world and those associated with human culture.
Grieving like a hen over her lost chicks, Antigone translates natural
instinctual and maternalbehavior into the ritualized forms of familial
duty betting the human community, performing the death rite by sprin-
kling the body with earth, lamenting over the corpse, and pouring liba-
tions until the guards intervene (42936).
24
For all the naturalness of Antigones actions, the place where
Polyneices body lies exposed assumes the qualities of an impromptu
stage with events unfolding before an ersatz audience (episkopoi, noted
above). In the Guards account, the powerful conjunction of natural,
supernatural, and human elements suggests that Creon does not exercise
the control he imagines over this staging area. Besides attracting unwel-
come performers (Antigone), Creons Totentheatermeant to display the
punishment that awaits a traitor after deathcannot contain its prin-
cipal set piece. As we learn later from Teiresias, Polyneices corpse refuses
to stay put, but is carried off by scavenging dogs and birds. Indeed, its
carrion spreads throughout Thebes, polluting the citys altars and sanctu-
aries and offending the gods (101522, 108183).
If the corpse that Creon exposes proves more expansive than he had
expected, so too does the prison where he immures Antigone. Creon
decides to conceal her [krups] in a rocky cave, located down a track
unwalked by men (ermos . . . brotn stibos, 77374). Given the chambers
isolation, Creon assumes that Antigone will remain there alone and
deserted (monn ermon, 887), wasting away in a living death. Again
Creon miscalculates his dominion over bodies and their environment, for
the cave becomes an irresistible magnet, attracting Haemon and then
Creon himself, along with his entourage. The maelstrom of human
activity that follows reveals the tyrants powerlessness over the people
and localities he thinks he controls.
As with the Guards account of events on the dusty plain, the Mes-
sengers report of what happens in Antigones cave-tomb resembles a
scene within a play. In this setting, however, the spectatorsCreon in
particularare terried at what they might see and hear. On his arrival at
the cavern, Creon orders his men to provide his surrogate eyes and ears:
Move nearer, quickly; approach the tomb and look
There at the opening where the stones have been removed,
And reaching the actual entrance, see whether
I heard Haemons voice, or if the gods deceive me.
(121518)
Answering his command that they Look! (athrsath, 1216), the Mes-
senger dutifully reports We looked (throumen, 1220), and at the fur-
thest end of the tomb / . . . we saw [kateidomen] . . . (1221). The scene of
devastation they describe (122025) nally confronts Creon, who enters
the cave and sees (horai, 1226) for himself, watching in horror as his
son consummates his marriage with his dead bride.
25
Antigones decision to die in order to bury her brother and Haemons
rejection of his father in favor of his doomed ance apparently represent
two opposed conceptions of family loyaltynativist versus marital.
26
However, we should recall that on his rst entrance, Haemon emphasizes
his love and respect for his father, the sine qua non of his identity:
Father, I am yours (pater, sos eimi, 635; also 7014, 741, 749). Like
Antigone, Haemon values ties of blood, which prompt him to try to per-
suade his father to change course. Haemon speaks not on behalf of his
ance, but on behalf of Creon, urging him to show greater exibility and
remain responsive to the citizens over whom he rules. Accused of ghting
on the side of a woman, Haemon responds, If you are a woman; it is for
HELI OS 192
you, in fact, that I show familial concern (cicq tvq ot oot oq otv
qoq oooi, 741). As the loyal son points out, who better than he to
help Creon maintain his position of power by reporting what the citizens
are saying amongst themselves (688700, 733)? Only after Creon dis-
plays utter disdain for his advice (72627, 742, 748, 752, 754, 75861),
revealing in the process a deep-seated misogyny (67780, 740, 746, 756)
and a tyrannical conception of state power (ltat, cest moi, 73439), does
Haemon abandon his father for Antigone.
27
In political terms, Haemon resembles a loyal ally who feels duty-
bound to tell a friendly power that they are making a fatal mistake.
28
Short of applying force, all one can do in such a circumstance is to tell
the truth as persuasively as possible, until it becomes counterproductive
to say more. Only at that point does Haemon shift his family loyalties to
Antigone, pursuing his bride-to-be into the cave. There he follows her
example by committing suicide, and he dies at her side. Far from sig-
naling a romantic union that dees death, the couples fatal embrace
reveals the tragic cost of maintaining family valuesboth those based on
blood ties and on the ties of marriagein a political community whose
ruler only pretends to honor them.
What of Ismene and the family values she represents? Initially she
functions as a dramatic foil to Sophocles heroine, much as
Chrysothemis in Electra. Although sympathetic to her sisters cause,
Ismene remains unwilling to act against the powers that be, acknowl-
edging the realities of political and patriarchal control. Her change of
heart arises from Creons sense that she must be a party to Antigones
resistance, something the audience knows from the opening scene to be
false. Creons reaction further establishes his lack of understanding of the
events he has set in train, but it also serves to indicate the growing sup-
port for Antigones deance. Accused of being a partner in crime, Ismene
accepts the charge, shifting from the Realpolitik of self-preservation with
which she began to the potentially fatal solidarity that joins her to
Antigone. It is only her sister (55160) and later the Chorus (77071)
who save her from execution.
29
Ismene not only chooses to stand by Antigone in defying Creons edict
forbidding Polyneices burial, but she also protests on behalf of the mar-
riage of her sister and Haemon that Creon willfully destroys:
ISMENE: Will you kill the bride of your own son?
CREON: There are other furrows for him to plow.
ISMENE: But that would not suit him or her.
CREON: I loathe evil wives for my son.
ISMENE: Oh dearest Haemon, how your father dishonors you.
CREON: You grieve me too much, you and this marriage of yours.
(56873)
Ismenes last stand on stage presents a double challenge to Creon,
uniting the family values represented separately by Antigone and (albeit
later) by Haemonloyalty to the natal and to the nuptial family, the
twin strands that Creon fails to honor.
Ismenes return to the connes of the house (her effective dismissal
from the play after line 581) does not discredit her awakened sense of
family values. Although locked away in the oikos afterwards, Ismenes
virtual presence behind the faade suggests that resistance to Creons
edict has spread to the inner sanctum, where it nds its symbolic voice in
another female characterplayed, quite possibly, by the same (Ismene)
actorCreons wife Eurydice.
30
The suicide of Eurydice offers the culminating image of Creons failure
to respect the family, returning us from the distant places of the plain and
the cavern to the stage itself. On hearing the news of her sons death,
Eurydice withdraws silently into the palace immediately offstage,
prompting the Messenger to hope that she will avoid disruptive city-
wide lamentation (es polin goou, 1247) and choose to mourn Haemon
within the walls, / ordering her servants to grieve inside the house with
private lament (124849). We catch here a faint echo of the political
dangers associated with death ritual that Creon sought to avoid by out-
lawing burial for the traitor Polyneices. By eschewing public grief, the
Messenger hopes that the family values evoked by Haemons death will
not infect the city at large.
Eurydice, however, withdraws into the inner recesses of the oikos only
to reemerge with a vengeance. Announcing her death to Creon, the Mes-
senger proclaims: It is there to behold; it is no longer hidden indoors
(1293). Draped over the household altar of Zeus herkeios, the dead Eury-
dice appears on the ekkuklma, her blood polluting the sacred heart of
Creons home.
31
Exposed for all to see, her corpse offers a theatrically vis-
ible version of the political display of Polyneices body on the distant
plain, a source of pollution for the city of Thebes. Like her erstwhile
daughter-in-law Antigone, Eurydice refuses to remain closed off inside
the palace, but rather reveals the devastation wreaked by her husband to
public view. Her corpse balances that of Haemon, which Creon has
brought back from the cave into the theater; indeed, her family values
reect her maternal role as the all-mother of this dead man (toude pam-
HELI OS 194
mtr nekrou, 1282).
32
But we learn of another son, whose death Eurydice
also blames on Creon, lamenting . . . the empty bed of Megareus
(kkusasa . . . kenon lechos, 13023). She refers to her elder son who, in
other versions of the myth, was sacriced to ensure Thebes victory over
the Argive invaders led by Polyneices.
33
Eurydices maternal grief point-
edly recalls Antigone shrieking out a lament [anakkuei] . . . / like a bird
who sees her empty [kens] nest, / the bed [lechos] orphaned of her
nestlings (42325).
34
The actions of both women demonstrate that loy-
alty to ones own blood has consequences that extend beyond the family.
Neither Eurydices maternal sorrow for her dead sons nor the sibling
duty that Antigone feels for her dead brother can remain circumscribed
by the private space of the oikos.
As with the plain where Polyneices corpse lay exposed, and the
cavern-tomb where Antigone and Haemon died, the stage itself now
resembles a mini-theater, one that displays the fatal consequences of
Creons misrule. Indeed, the corpse-polluted altar of his household offers
the quintessential image of Creons perversion of family values. His
twisted effort to seal off Polyneices corpse from the earth and the living
Antigone from the sun has spread to his own home, which he now calls
the implacable harbor of Hades (1284). The contagion represented on
the ekkuklma has infected Creon himself, transforming him from the
ruler who puts Polyneices body on view for others to see into a person-
ally involved spectator of the corpses of Polyneices, Antigone, and his
own son Haemon, whom he must watch in the act of suicide. Like his son
when he reaches the cave, Creon arrives home to nd his partner slain by
her own hand, his oikos robbed of its future. By this point, Creon himself
has become the object of the pitiful gaze of the Chorus and the audience,
transformed before their eyes into a walking corpse. Resembling
Antigone on her way to prison (desolate of loved ones, ill-fated, / still
living I go to the grave-dug world of the dead, 91920),
35
Creon is now
barely alive, a fading shadow who exists no more than no one (1325).
Although the nal scene presents him as destroyer of his own family,
Creon also expresses strong opinions about family values earlier in the
play, aligning them with political authority and civic order. After dis-
cussing the need for obedient offspring (63947), Creon links family
values to sound government, an argument one could imagine hearing,
mutatis mutandis, from a right-wing evangelical patriot today:
If those born of my own line, whom I raise, lack
Discipline and order, how much more will those outside my family!
The man who behaves properly within his own family
Also appears righteous within the city.
Thats the kind of man I would trust to rule
The city well, and to serve the city well as a citizen,
Holding his assigned place in the storm of battle,
A good and noble ally who will stay the course of war.
There is no greater evil than refusing to obey orders from above [anarchias].
That destroys cities and ruins households,
Shattering the battle line, putting allied spears to ight.
Obedience [peitharchia] saves the lives of those who follow the straight path.
(65976)
Creon extends patriarchal order from the family to the political commu-
nity at large, replacing paternal commands with the dictates of those in
power. He then moves effortlessly into the commonplace about the need
for soldiers to follow orders in battle. Obedience is the supreme value:
blind allegiance to authority at home, in the city, and on the battleeld.
What we do not get from Creon, however, is any contact with a deep
ground of tradition, any acknowledgement of the unmediated sense of
duty that ties Antigone to her actions.
36
Her obedience (to adopt
Creons word) resists absorption into his new political ideology. Emulating
Antigones sense of familial loyalty, a citizen would become (minimally) a
contrarian who refuses to cave into political pressure or to abandon tradi-
tional behavior or beliefs in the name of service to public authority and
civic order.
Creons insistence that patriarchal family values ow seamlessly into
political obedience involves the corollary that the well-ordered family, just
like the well-managed city, naturally subordinates women to men. At var-
ious moments in the play, particularly in the scenes with Antigone and
Ismene (525, 57879) and with Haemon (64862, 67780), Creon
describes the challenge to his power in terms of rebellious females stirring
up trouble within the oikos. Creon even accuses Haemon of siding with
Antigone (740, 746), of being the household slave of a woman (gunaikos
n douleuma, 756). He reminds his son that the proper relationship of hus-
band to wife is that of a plowman choosing his eld: There are other fur-
rows to be plowed (aj rwv simoi ga; r caJ tev rwn eij si; n guv nai, 569).
We might contrast Creons use of a natural image (women are like the
fertile earth, and men can work this eld or that) with the maternal
image, noted above, of a mother bird protecting or mourning her young.
The simile suggests that the bond between mother and child (or living
sister and dead brother, in the case of Antigone) arises instinctually and
HELI OS 196
specically, without the mediation of culture (or agriculture). This
maternal/natal image has a primal, wild quality far removed from Creons
rational advice that Haemon choose another plot of land, based on the
underlying assumption that elds/women are interchangeable and readily
available for male exploitation.
37
Not surprisingly, Creons fear of the threat posed by women leads him
to try to control them spatially. Accusing Ismene of lurking in the house
like a snake and of having a share in this burial [of Polyneices] along
with Antigone (53135), Creon commands his slaves to imprison both
sisters inside: From now on they must be women, and not roam free
(57779). Earlier he vowed to root out all conspirators and fellow trav-
elers, even if they prove members of his own family worshiping at the
altar of Zeus herkeios (48688). Whether removing them from the inner
recesses or constraining them within, Creon overestimates the control he
exercises over his own household and family. His wife makes this dramat-
ically clear at the very altar of Zeus, where she curses her husband and
takes her own life. Far from rooting out the problem, Eurydice exposes
the pollution that Creons perverse sense of family values has unleashed
on his own oikos.
Creons views on female subordination, family hierarchy, and the
authoritarian nature of political power give rise to a series of fatal mis-
placements, from the above-ground exposure of Polyneices corpse to the
entombment of the living Antigone. By decreeing these punishments,
Creon effectively turns the world upside down, as Teiresias proclaims:
Having hurled below [kat] one who belongs above [an],
Lodging a living soul dishonorably in a tomb,
You possess one who belongs to the gods below [katthen]
A dishonored, unmourned, unholy corpse.
In this neither you nor the gods above [an]
Have any part, but you have done violence against them.
(106873)
38
Highlighted by the juxtaposition of above (an, 1068, 1072) and
below (kat, 1068; katthen, 1069), Creons spatial inversions join the
two most prominent distant places in the play: the dusty plain where
Polyneices body lies unburied and the subterranean cave where
Antigone is buried alive.
39
As noted above, however, Creons disruption of the natural order
extends in all directions, spreading miasma across the world of the play:
the earth, the sky, the city of Thebes with her public altars, and the
household altar of Creons own oikos, polluted with his wifes blood. The
Guard describes the dust covering Polyneices corpse, scattered as if by
someone avoiding pollution [agos] (256). Creon himself acknowledges
the stain spread by Eteocles and Polyneices striking and being struck
with the pollution [miasmati] of their mutual murder (17172). Wor-
rying about the consequences of burying Antigone alive, Creon decides
to put out enough food [phorbs, literally animal fodder] to avoid pollu-
tion [agos], / so that the entire city can escape delement [miasma]
(77576; also 889). Creon anticipates the contagion resulting either from
the murder of kin (as was the case with Antigones brothers) or from
forced starvation, which the Greeks viewed as a particularly vile mode of
killing.
40
When confronted with Teiresiass account of citywide pollution,
however, Creon blasphemously denies that humans can ever dele the
gods, making nonsense of the very concept of pollution he previously
entertained:
You will not hide him [Polyneices] in a grave,
Not even if the eagles of Zeus want to seize
His body and bring the carrion up to the throne of Zeus!
Not even that would frighten me of pollution [miasma]
To make me allow him to be buried. For I know full well
That no human being has the strength to pollute [miainein] the gods.
(103944)
As Robert Parker observes, we can only understand this [Creons] rejec-
tion of plain fact as lunatic deance. Through pollution, the universe has
given an unambiguous verdict on the moral question.
41
Earlier Creon asserted that his treatment of Polyneices corpse is at one
with the will of the gods, for Polyneices had intended to burn the gods
temples, offerings, and the city itself (28229; also 198210). Creon
appeals specically to Zeus as the defender of his edict and rule (184,
304), although he insists that the gods role as guarantor of households
Zeus of kindred blood (xunaimon, 65890), Zeus of the household
altar (herkeiou, 48788)will offer no protection for Antigone, who has
deed his edict.
42
For her part, Antigone insists that Creons pronounce-
ments do not spring from Zeus and therefore have no legitimacy if they
violate the unwritten, eternal laws of the gods (45057). Events prove
Antigone right, and the political appropriation of divine purview champi-
oned by Creon runs up against its own limits, with fatal consequences.
HELI OS 198
Creon participates in the canonical boundary violation that the
Greeks called hubris (going too far), which does violence to the order of
things and is punished accordingly.
43
Although the word is never applied
to Creon in the play, he twice accuses Antigone of this outrage (hubrizein,
480; hubris, 482), for transgressing the laws that had been laid down by
him (481), and for threatening his sense of masculine control, for now I
am no man, but she is a man (484).
44
Whatever Antigones challenge to
Creons law and authority, it does not extend to the realm of the gods.
Creon, however, assumes the dangerous status of a theomachos (battler
against the gods), indicated by the natural and supernatural responses to
Creons edict. The tyrants fall establishes all too clearly that the deities
above and below are appalled at his actions and exact their vengeance
accordingly.
We may compare Creon to two representative gures of hubris evoked
by the Chorus, Capaneus (12737) and Lycurgus (95565). In the rst
case, Zeus blasts the Argive hero with a bolt of lightning when he tries to
mount the walls of Thebes and burn the city, for Zeus loathes the boasts
of the great [megals] tongue (12728). The Chorus return to this idea in
the closing lines of the play, with Creon representing the object lesson in
place of Capaneus: One must not be impious / in any way against the
gods, for the great words [megaloi de logoi] / of boasters are paid back / with
great blows [megalas plgas] (134952). In the second case, the god
Dionysus locks the quick-to-anger (oxucholos, 955) Lycurgus in a rocky
prison for blaspheming the god with mocking fury (kertomiois orgais,
956) and mocking tongue (kertomiois glssais, 96061). Far better than
Antigone, the ostensible subject of comparison, the example of Lycurgus
suits Creon all too well.
45
When the Chorus suggest (27879) that the
mysterious covering of dust over Polyneices corpse might be the work of
the gods, Creon forbids them to speak further before what you say lls
me with fury [orgs] (280). Creon exhibits similar outbursts of anger
with every character he addresses in the play (except the Messenger near
the end), frequently with a tongue-whipping mockery: the Guard
(30626), Antigone (47389, 498, 52425, 88384), Ismene (53135,
56181), Haemon (72661), his own attendants (93132), and the
Theban spokesperson for the gods, Teiresias (103347, 105563). In
Lycurgan fashion, Creon extends his blasphemy directly to Olympus,
mocking the eagles of Zeus whom he challenges to bear scraps of Polynei-
ces corpse to their masters throne.
46
Creons politicized (or perhaps better, tyrannized) family values
have disastrous consequences for his own oikos and for the city he rules.
The will of the gods conjoin with the forces of nature (including instinc-
tual human loyalty to those near and dear) to bring him down.
47
The
relationship between the Greek gods and the natural world is far too
complex to explore here, but sufce it to say that the gods in tragedy
work through the phenomenal world in a manner that eventually mani-
fests itself for humans to see. As Creons fate demonstrates, his family
values prove to be at odds with the numinous forces working through
nature, a possibility suggested to him at several points in the play. Inca-
pable of exibility, Creon is the tree in Haemons parable which refuses to
bend in a winter storm and so is uprooted (71214). Haemon also com-
pares his fathers failure to adapt to a ship captain who will not adjust his
sails in strong winds and ends by sailing his ship upside down
(71518).
48
Insisting on unquestioned obedience to authority, Creon
exercises strict top-down control over both human society (citizens, sol-
diers, women, wives, children) and the forces of nature, control that
proves to be illusory.
The specic manner in which Creons exposure of Polyneices body
disturbs the natural and divine order merits close attention. Antigone
characterizes her brothers unburied corpse as a rich treasure house
[glukun thsauron] / for birds looking to the pleasure of feeding (2930).
Later, Teiresias describes how the citys altars and sacricial pits refuse
to burn, stuffed full of carrion from the rotting corpse brought by
scavenging dogs and birds (100511, 101618).
49
This unnatural sur-
feit of human esh provides the physical correlative to Creons materi-
alist assumptions about the root cause of his problemsthe desire for
money. He accuses the Guard (293304, 31014, 322, 23436), Teire-
sias (103539, 104547, 1055, 1061), and people in general (22122)
of taking bribes and betraying the city out of greed. In place of the
values (principles, ideals, sense of duty) of those who challenge him,
Creon can see only value (money, precious metals, payoff) at work.
50
Typical of those who view the world in fundamentally material terms,
Creon never claims that he is motivated by personal gain. On the con-
trary, he champions obedience to authority and patriotic sacrice to the
state, which, as we learn in the scene with Haemon, equates to Creon
himself. Corruption and greed only motivate those who oppose him, a
principle that operates among political and business elites to this day.
51
Exploring the link between tyranny and money in Greek tragedy, Richard
Seaford (2004) focuses on Creons accusation that prophets are avari-
cious (philarguron, 1055, literally lover of silver). Teiresias counters,
No, it is tyrants who love disgraceful gain (to; dev ge turavnnwn
HELI OS 200
aijscrokevrdeian filei`, 1056).
52
He then describes Creons abuse of
death ritualburying the living and exposing the dead (106671)in
terms of a perverse economic transaction. According to Teiresias, Creon
gives up the living Antigone and in return [anth hn, 1070] . . . possesses
[echeis, 1071] a corpse that properly belongs to the gods below. For this
transaction, Creon will pay in exchange (amoibon antidous, 1066) a
corpse from his own loins. The treasure house of Polyneices unburied
esh ironically plays into Creons paradigm of material corruption, where
the balance sheet demands the dead body of Haemon.
A different notion of exchange or return is implicit in the name of
Creons nemesis, Antigon: anti- (in return for) + gon (birth), the prob-
able etymology.
53
Her name suggests the primacy of her natal family, the
loyalty owed to those who gave her birth, commitments that compel
Antigone to stand up for her brother, with no interest in material gain or
in the benets of obedience to Creons authority. The value of Antigones
resistance resides in the act of burial itself, bought at a terrible price.
Whatever prot accrues does so only to others, via the memory of her
heroic example. As she makes her nal exit out of the theater, Antigone
addresses the Chorus of Theban elders, asking them to bear witness to
what she suffers for giving reverence to reverence (tn eusebian sebisasa,
943), a transaction based on preserving an equality rather than on
gaining an advantage. But her audience has grown. Antigone begins the
play by appealing to her sister, and then she confronts Creon (Kren or
Ruler) after her capture. She ends by calling on the representatives of
the city at large, challenging them to see and remember, an appeal that
extended to the original audience in the theater of Dionysus, as it now
extends to us.
54
Some scholars argue for a different meaning of anti-gon, against gen-
eration, emphasizing Antigones rejection of the traditional roles of a
fth-century Athenian woman, those of wife and mother. Although this
etymology seems less likely than the one advanced above, it ts
Antigones controversial recantation (90415), where she states that
the duties she owes her dead brother outweigh the competing claims of a
husband or offspring (should she ever have them). Her family values
appear to favor the dead over the living, and for some readers of the play
this signals a morbidity that ends appropriately with her suicide. Viewed
from a political rather than a psychological perspective, however, what
Antigone offers in return for her birth is not death or some dead-end
service to the dead. Far from being simply against generation,
Antigones values lend themselves to what Hannah Arendt calls the
natality of action.
55
For Arendt, an individuals timely consequential
choices, often taken under duress, can generate actions from others, the
cumulative effect of which brings something new into the world.
Antigones deance of Creons decree does just that, at least in the world
of the play. As our discussion of the spatial aspects suggests, her resist-
ance moves out of the palace and into the public sphere, eventually
spreading to the distant places of the dramathe plain, the cave, the city
of Thebesand nally extending (at least in principle) to the audience in
the theater and the audience beyond.
Let us now consider briey how family values are conceived and
understood (or misconceived and misunderstood) in contemporary
political discourse, and see what light Antigone can shed on our renewed
interest in the family as a battleground of moral and political choice. In
the 2004 United States presidential elections, the platforms of both
major political parties contained extensive discussions of the family. In a
prominent section titled Protecting Our Families, the Republican Party
asserted that families are the cornerstone of our culturethe building
blocks of a strong society.
56
To strengthen this social foundation, the
Republicans emphasized (and still do) a variety of programs, including
welfare reform (welfare programs undermine families, depriving Ameri-
cans of the pride of earning a paycheck), healthy choices, including
abstinence (obesity and sexually transmitted disease threaten childrens
health), family privacy (stopping telemarketers, computer spam, and
identity theft), educational rights of parents and students (public
funding of religious schools and fostering voluntary student-initiated
prayer), a Constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage
(against states or locales that license same-sex marriages), and a culture
of life (praising the President for his bold leadership in defense of life,
meaning his stand against abortion and a womans right to choose to
have one, established by the 1973 United States Supreme Court decision
of Roe vs. Wade).
That Republican platform saw no tension between the federal govern-
ment and the family, except when activist federal judges . . . undermine
democracy by legislating from the bench. That a family may not consti-
tute itself in a Republican fashion does pose a problem, but Republican-
sponsored legislation and constitutional amendments, the platform
asserts, will take care of it. In such cases the culprit is not aberrant cou-
ples or families, but rather the activist judges (the phrase occurs fre-
quently) who sanction inappropriate familial behavior. Similarly, one
nds no hint of conict between natal and marital loyalties, and nothing
HELI OS 202
(outside of liberal policies that will be overturned) that threatens the
easy and natural congruence between the family and the state.
At the level of specic policies, an American citizen can learn little if
anything from Sophocles theatrical exploration of fth-century B.C.E.
Athenian family values. Cultural and historical differences make non-
sense of any such prospect. But at a deeper level, we can perceive in the
Republican rhetoric something Creonic taking shape. Their platform
envisions a tame, sanitized family, one that will never have cause to
worry (exceptions noted above) about a government so fervently com-
mitted to protecting it. We nd an unexamined assumption regarding
the close alignment between the right kind of family and the right kind
of government, a view that Creon would surely endorse. In the language
of the Republican platform, Sophocles presents us with an activist ruler
in Creon, but not in terms of extending rights to those previously excluded
from them (the case against the judges, courts, and laws assailed by the
Republican Party). Rather, Creon takes away a right traditionally allocated
to families, the right (and duty) to bury kin. Applied to the Supreme
Court decision of Roe vs. Wade, which recognizes a womans right to an
abortion, the Republican platform threatens to interfere with part of
United States legal tradition. Naturally we nd no reference in the doc-
ument to civil disobedience as an appropriate response to such govern-
ment intervention.
Public relations documents such as major political party platforms, of
course, are designed to minimize differences between perceived public
opinion (or practice) and the national policies promoted by the political
party in question. Tragic conict has no place here, but there also is pre-
cious little room for straight talk. A president who wages a war on terror
that sacrices hard-won legal protections while unleashing unprecedented
terrorist acts, who launches a moral crusade to protect markets and con-
trol foreign resources, who inates already massive contracts for weapons
manufacturers and subsidies for giant corporations (for whom maximizing
prot is the only value), who undermines international organizations
designed to protect the family of man, who reneges on international
protocols for protecting the environment, who weakens laws designed to
guarantee worker safety, and who refuses to fund international aid pro-
grams if they also promote population control through sex education and
contraceptionsuch a man is lauded for his bold leadership in defense of
life. Put simply, the Republican platform ignores basic contradictions
within the body of its own argument: death-dealing policies are presented
as laudable examples of life-afrming heroics.
In September 2005, Cindy Sheehan, an American mother from Vacav-
ille, California, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq, ended her month-
long protest outside President Bushs ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Sheehans family values led herand hundreds of other mothers and
wives and childrento challenge the war that killed her son and many
others, including over 100,000 Iraqi civilians (as of the date of this
article), whose deaths go unmourned in the Western press.
57
Rejecting
the triumphal rhetoric of their erstwhile commander-in-chief, these
women came to understand that the fatal misplacements of the current
warinvasion and occupationhonor neither the living nor the dead.
Sheehan said as much in a speech delivered to the Veterans for Peace
Convention, just before she set up Camp Casey in her effort to con-
front the president:
And Im gonna say, And you tell me what the noble cause is that my
son died for. And if he even starts to say freedom and democracy,
Im gonna say bullshit. You tell me the truth. You tell me that my son
died for oil. You tell me that my son died to make your friends rich.
You tell me my son died to spread the cancer of Pax Americana, imperi-
alism in the Middle East. You tell me that, you dont tell me my son
died for freedom and democracy. Cause were not freer. Youre taking
away our freedoms. The Iraqi people arent freer, theyre much worse
off than before you meddled in their country.
58
Before she kills herself at the household altar, Eurydice laments the
empty bed (kenon lechos) of her son Megareus, sacriced for the war
effort (Ant. 13025). Aeschylus and Euripides also use the image of the
desolate bed to convey the costs of war on those who must stay behind.
In Aeschyluss Persians, the Chorus describe the wives left at home after
their husbands departure for a foreign war:
Longing for their men, marriage beds overow with tears,
And each Persian woman, softly grieving, longing for her man,
The bedmate she sent off with his war-raging spear,
Is abandoned, yoked alone in marriage.
(Pers. 13339)
In Euripides Trojan Women, the Chorus of females recount the sack of
their city by their new Greek masters: Slaughter at the city altars, / and
the headless corpses of husbands / ll the beds of their young wives . . .
HELI OS 204
(Tro. 56264). Antigone, Eurydice, the women of Persia and of Troy,
Cindy Sheehan and the women of Camp Casey, the Iraqi widows and
orphans, the mothers of the disappeared in Argentina, the women who
gathered at Greenham Common and who marched for peace in Northern
Ireland, all grieve over beds emptied of their loved ones or lled with
their corpses. In their various ways, these women resist political
authority that demands the sacrice of their loved ones in the name of
some larger civic or national good.
Creon is punished for ignoring the fatal contradictions between his
own sense of rule and that of the population at large, for assuming that
family values mean unquestioned obedience to state authority, for
insisting that he alone knows what the gods really want. Short of the
rapture awaited by apocalyptic Christians, the Republican Party may
never get the clarity of insight that eventually comes to the Theban
tyrant in Sophocles play. Here we may wish that life more closely imi-
tated art, hoping (with the Chorus) that
The power of fate [moiridia or apportionment] is strange;
Neither wealth nor warfare
Nor defensive towers nor black ships
Crashing the waves can ward it off [ekphugoien, literally escape it].
(Ant. 95154)
The non-Creons among us might also draw courage and inspiration from
the deep-rooted resistance to political manipulation found in Sophocles
heroine, and mirrored in the acts of contemporary Antigones who ght
against policies that destroy families while claiming to protect them.
59
Notes
1
See, for example, adaptations including Jean Anouilhs Antigone (Paris 1943);
Bertolt Brechts Antigone (Zurich 1948); Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston
Ntshonas version The Island, set in the prison on Robben Island (South Africa 1973);
Margarethe Von Trottas lm Die bleierne Zeit (Germany 1981; known as The German
Sisters or Marianne and Julianne in English); Irish versions of the original by Tom Paulin
(The Riot Act, 1985), Brendan Kennelly (Antigone, 1996), Conall Morrison (Antigone,
2003), and Seamus Heaney (Burial at Thebes, 2004); African treatments by Femi
Ososan (Tegonni, an African Antigone, 1994) and Sylvain Bemba (Black Wedding Candles
for Blessed Antigone, 1990; originally published in French as Les noces posthumes de
Santigone, 1988); and America adaptations by A. R. Gurney (Another Antigone, 1988)
and Janus Glowacki (Antigone in New York, 1997). For references to the Greek text I
follow Lloyd-Jones 1998; English translations are my own, unless otherwise noted.
2
Patterson 1998, 24 (the Classical Athenian polis structured itself on the model of
the family) et passim; also Foley 1982. As Murnaghan (1986, 207) points out, Antigone
dramatizes the consequences of rifts between entities that ought ideally to overlap and
support each other: the family and the city, political policies and religious traditions.
3
Of course, women performed important functions in other contexts essential to
the polis. They served as priestesses of civic cults (some of which were elected posi-
tions), ran the Thesmophoria (the oldest Athenian religious festival) and other festivals
associated with Demeter and agricultural fertility, and so on. Scholars also have shown
renewed interest in the oikos as an essential unit in the Athenian economy, one in which
women played a (often the) central role. For sources, see Rehm 2002, 32425 n. 125
(to which add Burton 1998).
4
To take a contemporary example, elections do not make a country democratic in
any meaningful sense, as they may simply ratify decisions already taken by the power
elite. The same applies to the propaganda use of the term democracy for countries
with no popular control over government institutions. See Herman and Brodhead
1984 on the use of demonstration elections as a tool of public relations. A recent
example: Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice traveled to Haiti to express American
support for the upcoming elections (New York Times, September 28, 2005, A12), with
no mention of the American coup that deposed the democratically elected President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide one year before. Elections with the wrong outcome are not tol-
erated, as evidenced by the refusal of the United States to recognize the democratically
elected government (led by Hamas) of the Palestinian Authority in 2006, and more
violently by the American (or United States-sponsored) coups overthrowing the demo-
cratically elected governments of Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), the Dominican
Republic (1965), Indonesia (1965), Chile (1973), Granada (1983), Nicaragua (the
Contra war of 19841990), and Venezuela (attempted coup in 2004).
5
I refer here to the United States (Moyers 2005), but the issue (sadly) generalizes,
sometimes reecting direct American involvement and inuence (Buss and Herman
2003). Right-wing, religious-based parties across the globe have championed (and
hidden behind) family values: Hindu nationalists in India fomenting religious hatred
and misogyny (DSouza 2003 on the Sangh Parivar and the saffronisation of educa-
tion; also Kumar 2002 and Hansen 1999, 15499, esp. 17981); Zionist settlers in the
occupied territories of Palestine (Guyatt 1998; consider the teary-eyed reports in the
New York Times of summer 2005 about Israeli settlers having to abandon the graves of
their forefathers following the disengagement from Gaza, failing to mention that
they had moved, at Israeli government expense, onto illegally seized Palestinian land at
most thirty-eight years before, displacing an indigenous population whose leveled
homes and abandoned cemeteries dated back centuries); Muslim extremists appending
traditional male patriarchy to sharia and demanding a dominant role for clerics in all
branches of government (L. Davidson 1998, 3148 on Iran; also cf. the new Iranian
constitution); religiously conservative North African countries encouraging the gen-
ital mutilation of women (Amnesty International 2005, whose list of countries with 50
percent or more of their female population undergoing serious genital mutilationcli-
toridectomy, excision, or inbulationincludes Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African
Republic, Chad, Cte dIvoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea,
Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and [northern]
Sudan); and so on. The prize for state-sponsored family values in the twentieth
HELI OS 206
century goes to the military-state religions of German National Socialism (Kater
2004; Haste 2001, 7399 and 20914; Pine 1997; Bock 1991; Koonz 1987), Italian
fascism (De Grazia 1992), Spanish (Catholic) Falangism (Richmond 2003, 428;
Graham 1995, 99100 and 18486 [The patriarchal family was seen as representing
the corporate order of the state in microcosm]), and Japanese radical Shint ultra-
nationalism/military imperialism (Szpilman 2004; Skya 2004; Reynolds 2004; Sottile
2004, who denes [20] the nexus of fascist thought and practice: the idea that indi-
viduals are actualized and liberated by an overarching identication with a sociopolit-
ical superstructure, specically the nation-state). All these fascist movements champi-
oned pro-natalist family values, mutatis mutandis, to support a military, corporatist
state bent on territorial expansion. The Nazis looked back to ancient Sparta as the par-
adigm, where families bred their sons for military service to the state (Losemann 1977;
Kater 2004, 3637).
6
See Rehm 2002 for a fuller treatment; see 11423 specically on Antigone.
7
Signicant misplacements (or displacements) in the Theban myth include the
infant Oedipuss exposure on Cithaeron, his transferal to the royal house of Corinth,
his return to Thebes (rightfully placed as king after Laiuss death, but wrongly placed
in the bed of his own mother), his eventual exile from Thebes (the subject of Sopho-
cles Oedipus at Colonus), Polyneices exile to Argos and return as leader of an invading
army, the exposure of his corpse on the plain, the living burial of Antigone, and so on.
8
See Zeitlin 1990; Grifth 1999, 50. For problems with Thebes as the negative
other of Athens, see Easterling 2005; Rehm 2002, 3637 and 23639; more gener-
ally, Knox 1957 and Ehrenberg 1954. Considering similarities between the plays two
antagonists, Euben (1997, 164) observes that Oedipuss daughter is, after all, Creons
niece. It is enough to give family resemblances and family values a bad name. Given
Greek tragedys interest in kindred bloodshed, one might wonder how the genre could
offer anything of positive value regarding family values. The short answer: tragedy
dramatizes family relationshipsand not simply their breakdownin various con-
texts, both within and across political communities.
9
Facing death, Antigone bewails the thrice plowed-up fate / of my father and the
whole / of our destiny, / that of the famous Labdacids, / the disasters of my mothers
bed / and my fathers incestuous lying with his ill-fated mother. / From what kind of
parents was I born, in my distress! (85966). The Chorus acknowledge her accursed
genealogy, addressing Antigone as wretched one, child of a wretched father, Oedipus
(37980) and savage child of a savage father (47172).
10
Cropp (1997, 152) elaborates this key distinction:
. . . the relationship with the brother is neither established nor severable by
processes determined by human nomos. In Athenian society both the marriage of
a woman and her provision of children to a husband were social and contractual
matters prescribed and determined by nomos. Divorce or the death of her hus-
band would return the woman to her own oikos, while her children belonged to
her husbands oikos. The bond between siblings was unarticial and permanent;
so it might be regarded as more natural, more purely rooted in physis.
11
Cf. Butler 2000, 7475 (citing with approval Weston 1997), who champions
radical kinship that replaces the blood tie as the basis for kinship with consensual
afliation. Without acknowledging the similarities, Weston and Butlers position
resembles Creons (Ant. 18291). For Creon, natural ties (family and other prior per-
sonal connections) should count for nothing, and we should select (188 theimn, 190
poioumetha, 191 nomoisi) our philoi and echthroi/polemioi purely on the basis of their con-
duct towards our community: Grifth 1999, 41. While obviously progressive, Butler
and Westons apparently open denition of kinship is, in my view, more susceptible
to manipulation by political authority than is Antigones insistence on loyalty to ones
natal family.
Although bracketed by some early editors as inconsistent, and deemed incredible
(apiston) by Aristotle (Rhet. 3.16), Antigones apparent recantation has received a great
deal of recent scholarly attention. For its anti-marital signicance, see Rehm 1994,
6364 and 6971; Neuberg 1990; Murnaghan 1986. Drawing on similarities with
Antigones allegiance to her father in Oedipus at Colonus (esp. 24154, 34252,
15981603), Johnson (1997) offers an Oedipal reading of Antigone that downplays the
political signicance of her deance; see also Butler 2000, 6263. Similarly, Katz
(1994, 95) thinks that Antigones claims to generic humanity run afoul . . . of a partic-
ularism which is tied directly to issues of gender, and to the inscription of gender
within the social order, a reading that effectively denies to Sophocles heroine any
individual autonomy. While accepting her particularism, Foley (1996) locates
Antigones moral agency within a broader cultural context: as a virgin in a traditional
society, and the last surviving family member, she must perform the death ritual for her
brother.
12
For Greek attitudes about the denial of burial, see Rehm 1994, 181 n. 9.
13
Note that the imagery of plague (it recurs at 1052; see notes 22 and 32 below)
tacitly links Creon to the plague unleashed on Thebes by the unsolved murder of
Laius, which features strongly in Oedipus Tyrannus (nosos plus cognates occurs a dozen
times in that play). For the link between nososincluding its general sense as some-
thing bad or banefuland pollution, see Parker 1983, 21720. The idea of contagion
implicit in the word ts the pollution spread by Polyneices corpse through the civic
and natural realms of Thebes. Teiresias concludes that Creons actions have unleashed
the enmity of other cities, suggesting that Thebes again faces problems from beyond its
borders: e[cqra/ de; pa`sai suntarav ssontai pov lei~ (and all cities are stirred up in enmity
[against Thebes], 1080). Lloyd-Jones (1998) posits a lacuna after the line, leaving its
meaning indeterminate, but the run of Teiresiass speech supports the view that Creon,
by insulting the gods, has gravely endangered the city he rules (Grifth 1999, ad
108083).
14
Some critics fail to grasp this central point, claiming that Sophocles audience
would have found Creons decree unproblematic, and Antigones resistance to it out
of line (e.g., Meier 1993, 191; Sourvinou-Inwood 1989; Ostwald 1986, 15657;
Calder 1968, 404). If they are right, then these critics face the very challenge vis--vis
the play as a whole that they presume to answer about the character of Sophocles
heroine: How did Antigone manage to be so completely out of step with its time and
place?
15
See Rehm 2002, 12223 and 345 n. 29. Grifth (1999, ad 1293) argues against
the ekkuklma, noting that the text lacks a phrase like Open the doors, and look . . . !
(cf. Aj. 344 and El. 1458).
16
Antigone species that she has summoned her sister outside the palace gates
HELI OS 208
(ektos aulein puln, 19) so that she could hear the news alone, suggesting that Creon
has ears in the palace.
17
The paradox of the confessional becoming public is, of course, basic to the work-
ings of most drama, but has particular relevance for Greek tragedy and comedy, which
does not depend on the illusion of the fourth wall (see note 20 below).
18
Although the play seems to forget Ismene (like Electra in Aeschyluss Choephori,
after she spurs Orestes on to revenge), her change of heart and her presence inside the
palace suggest growing support for Antigones act (later reported by Haemon,
692700). While the initial division between the sisters mirrors that of their brothers
Polyneices and Eteocles, Antigone and Ismenes quarrel has nothing to do with a
struggle over political power; rather, it reects their lack of political power in the face of
Creons decree. Ismenes belated support for Antigone and her willingness to die with
her sister indicate a radical challenge to the zero-sum game embodied by their
brothersnot mutual destruction, but (the possibility of) mutual resistance to a third
party, Creon.
19
As Lowe (1987, 127) points out, the two locales lie along the same route, reached
from the scenic space of the palace via one of the eisodoi; the other eisodos allows for
entries from and departures to the town and was used by the Chorus (100), Haemon
(631), and Teiresias (988 and 1090).
20
Commanding his entourage to prepare for the belated burial of Polyneices, Creon
suggests that the plain is visible from where he stands onstage: eis epopsion topon (the
place you can see over there, 1110). The tragedians use of elements in the civic and
natural landscape of Atticasun, sky, earth, mountains, river, sea, city walls and gates,
temples and precinctsreminds us how the tragic theater merged myth and legend
with visible Athenian reality.
21
Goheen (1951, 21 and 23) points out the military connotations of these words;
see also Pritchett 1971, 12830. Contrast Teiresiass use of ornithskopon (observing
birds, 999) as a source of prophecy, with no sense of military domination or control.
22
Later the Chorus ask Dionysus, god of Thebes (and the theater), to cleanse the
whole city, caught in violent plague (biaiva~ e[cetai / panvdamo~ povli~ ejpi; novsou,
114041).
23
Other tragic passages compare human pain over loss to a mother-bird grieving
over her empty nest: Aeschylus, Ag. 4959; Sophocles, Trach. 105 and Aj. 629. In one
of many remarkable reverse similes in the Odyssey, Homer compares the tears at the
recognition of Odysseus and his son Telemachus to those of a hawk whose nest has
been despoiled of its young (Od. 16.21519; see also Il. 9.32327, where Achilles com-
pares himself to a mother bird feeding her young). Cf. Benardetes puzzling claim
(1999, 55): She [Antigone] has nothing in common with beasts [!].
24
As Plato observes in Laws 8.840D-E, birds have families to which they remain
true. Bird imagery occurs in other contexts in Antigone, suggesting quite different nat-
ural human instincts. The Chorus compare Polyneices war-cry to the sharp screams
of an eagle (oxea klazn / aietos, 11213) who alights and feeds on Thebes (see J. F.
Davidson 1983, 4344; Grifth 1999, ad 11726). The image returns in inverted form
when birds scream (klazontas) incoherently (10012), having feasted on Polyneices
corpse (2930, 2056, 69698, 101618, 108183). Normally bird sounds and move-
ment enable Teiresias to interpret signals from the gods, when he sits at the time-hon-
ored spot for observing birds [ornithoskopon] (9991000). The prophets cooperative
relationship to nature contrasts with that described in the Ode to Man (34247),
where wild fowl are trapped in nets as part of mans mastery of the natural world (see
Goheen 1951, 2635 and note 21 above).
25
See Rehm 1994, 6265.
26
Haemon and Antigone are, in fact, rst cousins. Other than Creon mentioning
that he owes his political position to his kinship [agkhisteia] with the dead (17374),
however, their consanguinity receives no attention in the play, which emphasizes the
distance between (uncle) Creon and (niece) Antigone. Given the inbred nature of
tragedys royal families generally, their marriage would not be surprising; in Euripides
lost Antigone, Haemon and Antigone wed and have a child (hypothesis Sophocles, Ant.
1.68; Webster 1967, 18283). Such a union between close kin was perfectly legal in
fth-century Athens, which only forbade marriage between children born of the same
mother (Rehm 1994, 5455).
27
Signicantly Haemon exitsas does Antigone twice in the playout an eisodos,
not back into the house. His departure signals that his loyalties no longer have a place
within the palace/oikos of his father. As we learn from the Messenger, they have shifted
to Haemons erstwhile bride-to-be, and he dies with her in her marriage chamber/tomb.
28
Grifth (1999, ad 64144) notes that Creons language recalls that of interstate
treaties. In his response Haemon resembles Antigone in her opening scene with
Ismene. As Humphreys (1993, 74) notes, Her treatment of Ismene is that of a polit-
ical leader dealing with an unreliable ally; it entirely contradicts the principals of philia
on which she otherwise insists. Rather than the contradiction that Humphreys
observes, we might nd a further indication of the inextricability of familial duty and
political well being that Haemon argues for, and that the play brings home.
29
Ismenes family values seem inextricably tied to her sister, who rejects them as
coming too late. This speaks less of Antigones moral failure (the standard view) than
of the choices open to the living Ismene (as opposed to the totally dependent Polyne-
ices), the nature of tragic heroism (favoring individual rather than collective action),
the traditional gender biases of ancient Greece (privileging a brother over a sister), and
Antigones protectiveness towards Ismene, who need not die for what she did not do.
For Ismenes (existential) failure to act when it matters, see Antigones comments to
her early in the play (Ant. 6973), and Mogyordi 1996, 36065.
30
Various casting possibilities present themselves; all assume that the actor playing
Creonby far the longest partplays no other character, and that the Ismene actor
must also play the Guard (Antigone, Creon, and the Guard are on stage at the same
time). Grifth (1999, 2324), Jebb (2004, 7), and Segal (2003, 15) think that the
Antigone actor also played Eurydice; Cohen (1999, 14245) argues that the Ismene
actor does so. Each diverges on the other role assignments. Assuming the protagonist
who competed for the actor prize played Antigone and the most interesting of the
other available parts, I believe he also would have played Haemon, Teiresias, and the
Messenger (allowing the actor playing Antigone and Haemon to narrate their own
deaths, a feature of Greek tragedy noted in Hermann 1840, 34). If so, then the
Ismene actor would also play Eurydice, the other female family member of Creons
oikos who remains (more or less) in the palace.
31
See note 15 above. Eurydice stains the symbolic heart of the household with the
familys maternal blood, the altar of Zeus herkeios (of the courtyard), symbolizing the
integrity of the family (Grifth 1999, ad 13015). Earlier Creon vowed to take action
HELI OS 210
against Antigone or any kinsman: Whether she is my sisters child or closer in blood
[homaimonestera] / than all of ours tied to Zeus herkeios, / she and her sister [xunaimos]
will not escape the most dreadful death (48689). Ties of blood, signaled by the root
haim- (as in hemoglobin), are precisely what prompt Eurydices suicide. They also are
evoked by the name of her youngest son Haemon (Blood[being]) and emphasized in
his suicide: Haemon [Haimn] is dead; his own hand has shed his blood [haimassetai]
(1175). As Neuberg (1990, 75) concludes, Haemon dies to reassert the marriage-tie
(to Antigone) against the blood-tie (his father), Eurydice dies to reassert the blood-tie
(to Haemon) against the marriage-tie (her husband).
32
Entirely given to maternity (so Loraux 1987, 73 n. 27) captures the resonance
of pammtr, used elsewhere in tragedy only for earth, mother of all (pammtor te g:
Aeschylus, PV 90). Antigone features some twenty other pan-compounds, consistent
with the plays all or nothing stance. Pertinent examples include pagkoinois Eleusinias
(1120), referring to the Eleusinian Mysteries open to all (even slaves were initiated),
but also to the all-receiving goddess Demeter (from mtr [mother]) who was hon-
ored there (Grifth 1999, ad 111821). Creon announces his proclamation to the
whole city (pandmi polei, 7), but it brings a plague on the whole city (pandamos polis
epi nosou, 114142), manifest by the failure of the all-burning altars (bmoisi pam-
phlektoisin, 1006) to ignite, as absolutely all [panteleis] the altars and sacricial pits /
are stuffed full of the carrion ripped from Polyneices corpse by wild beasts
(101617). Although Creon once seemed to possess all powerful [pantel] rule over
the country (1163), epitomizing the all-resourceful (pantoporos) nature of man
(35656), he runs into the reality of pagkoitas Haidas (Hades who beds all, 81011;
also 36162), the god whom he fails to honor, and who takes from Creon his niece,
son, and wife by the end of the play.
33
Previously unmentioned in the text, Megareus (13025) was sacriced to save
the city from the Argive invaders, a subject dramatized in Euripides Phoenissae, where
he is called Menoeceus (Stay at Home?); see Jebb 2004, ad 1303, but cf. Mastronarde
1994, 2829. After cursing Creon as childkiller (ti paidoktoni, 1305) of both her
sons, Eurydice imitates their modes of death, stabbing herself with a sword like
Haemon and dying like a sacricial victim at the altar like Megareus.
34
For other parallels between Antigone and Eurydice, see Segal 1995, 12627.
Developing the mother-bird imagery (note 23 above), Katz (1994, 9394) claims that
Antigone has precipitated herself into a premature and surrogate maternity, her chal-
lenge to Creon not so much a refusal of male authority as . . . an assertion of maternal
rights (with Polyneices as her surrogate son). But Eurydice remains the all-mother
of the piece, and with her childrens deaths she more closely resembles Niobe (with
whom Antigone compares herself at 82333) than does Antigone. Like Eurydice,
Niobe married a Theban prince (Amphion, invoked by the Messenger at 1155), only
to lose all her offspring.
35
As well as taking on aspects of Haemon and Antigone, Creon compares himself
to a prophet when he interprets the sounds from within the cave (121213). Creon
belatedly incorporates perspectives and experiences of those whom he has rejected and
victimized.
36
As Benardete (1999, 27) points out, Love of country . . . begins in calculation.
One has to gure out the need for it. In terms of power, political leaders and the elites
they represent appeal to patriotism as a means of controlling the population, keeping
them focused on the enemy (internal or external) rather than on those who exercise
power over their lives. On Creons appeal to authoritarian patriotism, see Blundell
1989, 11924.
37
According to Saxonhouse 1992, 74, Creons belief in the interchangeability of
people reects the democratic ideology of fth-century Athens. Would she make the
same claim for Antigones view on marital interchangeability (90510), namely that
a husband represents an abstract role that could be played by several different men,
as Murnaghan (1986, 198) puts it? Cf. Euben 1997, 15758, who emphasizes the
polyphony of democratic debate (in the assembly, the boul, the agora), arguing that
the free exchange of individual points of view within a shared culture provided the
basis of Athenian popular sovereignty. Haemon would agree:
Dont carry in yourself only one [mounon] frame of mind,
Believing that what you say, and nothing else [kouden allo], is right.
Whoever thinks that he alone [monos] has sense
Or eloquence or moral character that no one else [ouk allos] has
Such people, when opened up, are seen to be empty inside.
(7059)
38
As Jebb (2004, ad 1072f.) and Grifth (1999, ad 107273) note, Creons inver-
sion of the bodies not only insults the gods below but also exposes the Olympian gods
to the pollution of the exposed corpse; see also Parker 1983, 62.
39
Creons sacrilegious reversal of the proper place for the living and the dead is only
the most egregious example of a pattern of spatial inversions associated with Creon (if
not immediately, then in retrospect). The Chorus describe the dark sand from the sea
bed churned up by storm winds until it strikes the shore (58693), and they evoke the
light [of salvation] spread out over the last root of the house of Oedipus / buried by
the bloody dust from those [divinities] below (599603, following Jebb 2004, and
not Lloyd-Jones 1998). Haemon warns that if his father fails to heed public opinion
and slacken his sails, / the ship will overturn and keep sailing with the rowing benches
upside down (71617). Creon himself speaks of his happiness turning upside down
(anatrepn, 1274). Grifth (1999, ad 16263, 18889, and 134346) links these
images to Creons insistence that things go straight in the manner he has deter-
mined, which they most certainly do not.
40
For the former, see Lloyd-Jones 1998, 77; the latter, Jebb 2004, ad 775 and Grif-
th 1999, ad 77376.
41
Parker 1983, 33 and 44; also Blundell 1989, 129. Teiresias ironically observes
how bits of Polyneices corpse have been puried or sanctied (kathgnisan, 1081)
by dogs and birds that are burying them in their stomachs (Grifth 1999, ad 1081).
Far from purication, such holy acts spread the pollution further. Only the funeral
belatedly performed by Creon consecrates the body: praying to the gods below,
washing and cremating the remains, and burying the ashes under a burial mound of
familial [oikeias] earth, a detail suggesting the dead mans restoration to his proper
place (11991204).
42
Creons certainty that his views represent the order of nature and the gods recalls
the poem by Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska, In Praise of Feeling Bad about
Yourself :
HELI OS 212
The buzzard never says it is to blame.
The panther wouldnt know what scruples mean.
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, theyd claim their hands were clean.
A jackal doesnt understand remorse.
Lions and lice dont waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know theyre right?
Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
In every other way theyre light.
On this third planet of the sun,
Among the signs of bestiality
A clear conscience is Number One.
In Antigone, however, the beasts that spread Polyneices carrion eventually muddy
Creons conscience, and he recognizes his fatal error.
43
Approaching Antigone as a drama about mans place in the universe (75),
Goheen (1951, 1011 and 5964) analyzes imagery of overstepping, trampling, and
transgression linked to Creons violation of the appropriate relationship between
humans and the gods.
44
In his rst scene with the Guard, Creon also refers to the burial of Polyneices
(or perhaps its cover-up; see Grifth 1999, ad 3089) as hubris, threatening to hang the
Guard unless he nds the perpetrator and reveals him to my eyes (3069).
45
On Creons similarity to Lycurgus, see Goheen 1951, 6566, 68, and 7071.
46
Although taking some liberties with Sophocles diction, Heaney (2004, 4445)
captures the extent and quality of Creons insult:
None of your pollution talk scares me.
Not if Zeus himself were to send his eagle
To scavenge on that esh and shit it down,
Not even that would put me back on my word.
For nothing done on earth can dele the gods.
47
As Cropp (1997, 152 and 154) puts it, Nature itself rebels against the unnatural
exposure of the corpse, polluting the city and disrupting its religious processes
(9981022). . . . Antigones rebellion is virtually a part of the rebellion of nature, and
part of the mechanism of retribution. A typically pregnant Sophoclean detail in the
Guards description of Antigones capture suggests the longing of the natural world for
Polyneices burialthe dust Antigone sprinkles over the corpse is thirsty (dipsian
. . . konin), presumably for the libations she then pours as part of the funeral rites
(42931).
48
Haemons example of a foolish sea captain is particularly apt, given that Creon
himself employs the metaphor of the ship of state to assert his leadership and the
obedience expected of his subordinates (18990), a metaphor picked up later by Teire-
sias (994).
49
Sophocles emphasizes the corpses physical delement, referring to it often (note
32 above) and with realistic details, like its rotting and stinking in the sun (41017,
etc.). Even Teiresiass vivid and repulsive description. . . [of] the failed sacrice . . . [is]
suggestive of the putrescent corpse of Polyneices (Grifth 1999, ad 100611; also ad
9056).
50
On Creons use of commercial and monetary vocabulary, see Goheen 1951,
1419, 91 and 12021; Grifth 1999, ad 22122, 295303, 46164, and 103539.
Besides material gain, Creon can only explain that people oppose him because they
have lost their minds, a condition he attributes to Antigone (562), Ismene (49192,
561), and Haemon (633, 744, 122829).
51
This ideological practice (one might say convention) operates powerfully in
the free world, a clich that has become synonymous with the free market, terms of
great irony given the enormous wealth that elites acquire at the expense of those they
exploit.
52
Seaford 2003, esp. 1056 (Creon is projecting his own desire for gain onto him
[Teiresias]), observing that tyrants in tragedy characteristically behave impiously, dis-
trust those close to them, and are motivated by greed; see further Seaford 2004,
15860. For Creon as tyrant, see Rehm 1994, 6061; Bushnell 1988, 5355; Podlecki
1966; and Bowra 1944, 7275.
53
On meaning of Antigon, see Grifth 2001, 132 n. 40; also Hamilton 1991.
54
Easterling 1996, 177. For the widening compass of Antigones interlocutors,
see Euben 1997, 16869, indirectly supporting the view of, among others, Whitman
(1951, 88), OBrien (1977, 115), Hamilton (1991), and Rehm (2002, 119), that
Antigone represents the epitome of responsible citizenship (Lane and Lane 1986,
182).
55
Arrendt 1958, 89, 17778, and 19092 (I owe this reference to Euben 1997,
171).
56
Republican Party Platform 2004.
57
The great majority of these deaths have occurred after the President declared vic-
tory on May 1, 2003, after his made-for-media jetghter landing on the aircraft carrier
USS Abraham Lincoln that had been specially sent out seventeen miles from its San
Diego port to receive the triumphant commander-in-chief (that title written just
below the cockpit window for the occasion; see http://www.cnn.con/2003/ALLPOLI-
TICS/05/01/bush.carrier.landing <March 14, 2006>. The contrast between public tri-
umph and private grief has its parallel in Creons inaugural speech to the leaders of
Thebes (168210) and the suicide of his wife inside the home (12781316). In the
case of Creon, however, the childkiller (1305) himself comes to grief, an object lesson
for those gathered in the theater. Here we might wish that life imitated art.
58
Sheehan 2005; cf. the proclamation of the rst Mothers Day by Julia Ward
Howe in 1870, which includes the following:
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking carnage for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to
teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We women of one country will be too
tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure
theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes out with our own. It
says, disarm. Disarm.
HELI OS 214
59
As Foley (1996, 58) points out, the specicity of Antigones motives require the
audience to accept that her heroic action cannot serve in any simple sense as a time-
less, gender-free model for civic disobedience. At the same time, it does not diminish
her heroism or her moral audacity. Given the contemporary political environment in
the West, the inspiration for effective civic disobedience may well require some compa-
rable specicity (as in the case of Cindy Sheehan), sufciently personal and devas-
tating to motivate action when action seems hopeless.
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HELI OS, vol.

33S, 2006 Texas Tech University Press

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