1 Sophocles' Antigone Introduction, translation, and notes by ...

polluting the gods by leaving what should be buried exposed (Polyneices' corpse), and
burying what should be allowed to live (Antigone).
Another problem is that Antigone claims that she would not do what she did for a
husband or a child, but only for a brother, arguing that the former are replaceable; since
her mother and father are dead, a brother is irreplaceable (905-12). The problem is that
Antigone told Creon that she was defending the unwritten laws of the gods, and it is
difficult to imagine that the gods would make the distinction that she now makes (cf. 450-
57). Goethe, and others, have claimed these lines were not written by Sophocles, but by a
later writer and were added to the text.
Nevertheless those lines are true to an ancient code which favors the paternal
family, or genos. A woman in particular regards the husband's family as foreign; her real
protection comes only from her paternal family. There is mythological support for
favoring brothers. For example, Althaea kills her son Meleager because he slew her
brothers after the Calydonian boar hunt. Furthermore, Antigone's argument has a literary
precedent: it was put forward by the wife of Intaphernes in Herodotus, when Darius asked
her to choose whose life she would save: child, husband or brother (Herodotus III. 119). 2
Antigone does not have child or husband, and her greatest loyalty at this point is
to her brother: she is giving her life for him. Like many a Sophoclean hero, she is
passionate in her devotion to a point that brings her past the "normal" human experience.
Her high-flown rhetoric makes the "inevitability" of her action understandable.
Sophoclean heroes like to justify themselves.
Hegel said the Antigone was "one of the most sublime and in every respect most
consummate work of art human effort ever produced" (On Tragedy 178). Although the
play is from fifth-century Athens, the issues about human rights have everlasting
2 It is clear that Sophocles knew his Herodotus: see Oedipus at Colonus 337-41 which
parallels Herodotus II. 35.
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