Background

• the "Seven against Thebes"
• the four children of Oedipus: Polynices, Eteocles, Ismene, Antigone
• the word "Haemon" in Greek means "blood": important in two respects: theme of the "blood" relative, of Creon's demands that the personal be entirely subordinate to the state leading to "blood"

Assignment for Monday:
 

• Interpreters of the play for many centuries (including much of antiquity) seem to have regarded it as evident that Creon and Antigone are equally "wrong" in their dogmatism. These days, most interpreters seem to side with Antigone. Think hard about:
1. What do you think? Is one or the other of the two more wrong or right?
2. What in the play would make others think differently (regardless of which side you choose in this debate)?
3. As you think about this, look in particular at the following passages, and of course collect others of your own:
• Creon: speech beginning at line 179, esp. 194-214; speech at 317ff; interaction with Antigone, esp. 528ff; interaction with Haemon, esp. the reaction to Haemon speech at 810ff.
• Antigone: speech at 499ff; interaction with Creon, esp. 558ff; speech at 900ff, with chorus reaction at 909ff;  argument at 995ff (note her use of the word "law" here!)
• collect other passages that seem important for this question

• Curiously, the play repeatedly insists on posing the opposition between Creon and Antigone as one between male and female. Why do you suppose Sophocles introduces this theme, and what associations does he build with maleness and femaleness that are important for the central ideas of the play?
• Important background: in ancient Athens, free women did not often go into public, but spent almost all of their time sequestered at home; when they did go out, they were covered from head to foot like Islamic women today; and they were not allowed to vote, or hold property in their own name, etc. (Note however that Antigone is a princess, and not an Athenian.)
• Study these sample passages:
• 541ff; 588ff; 651ff; 746-761
• collect other passages that seem important for this question

Question one: who's right, who's wrong, who's more right, who's more wrong

Theme: public versus private, state versus family, king's rights versus inalienable rights from the divine
 

• Creon advocates (relentlessly) duty to the state
• but the state is not some ideal collection of the citizens working together for the common good
• rather in C.'s mind the state is the king, and the "law" the king's whim, enforced --brutally if necessary!-- by the king's power
• example: lines 821ff
• Creon to Haemon, "Is Thebes about to tell me how to rule?" (that is, are the citizens of Thebes to tell me how to rule-- think about how this sounds to the participatory democracy that constitutes the audience!) Creon goes on, "Am I to rule this land for others-- or myself?" Haemon: "It is no city at all, owned by one man alone." Creon: "What? The city is the king's-- that's the law!" Haemon: "What a splendid king you'd make of a desert island-- you and you alone." (And compare the similar remark towards the beginning of the Oedipus the King: lines 66-67.) In the context of an Athenian audience, it's hard not to see this analysis (by Creon's own son! for godssake) as damning.
• example: 328ff, and compare 245, 564 (e.g.)
• we hear of the citizens grumbling against Creon, "heads together, tossing wildly, never keeping their necks beneath the yoke, loyally submitting to their king" -- a vivid image of oppression, not of loyalty to a state serving a higher purpose
• which brings up the important theme of WHY one should be loyal to the state, WHO the state serves
• Antigone advocates (relentlessly) the primacy of (1) blood relationships, (2) the "divine laws" that govern treatment of the dead
• the analysis of Creon as a wrong-headed tyrant sets up the possibilityof merit in resistance to tyranny: but is this how it plays out? Is Antigone doing something for the other citizens of the state, or for herself and her family?
• What exactly is A. defending, after all? Is she really defending the ancient, unwritten divine laws against the fallible human law of the tyrant?
• example: 561ff
• Antigone disturbingly reduces her wish to: "Give me glory!" What greater glory could I win than to give my own brother decent burial?" The emphasis on glory seems to carry with it worrisome overtones of the same sort of disease that infects Creon-- that is, an interest in self, over the interests of the common good. In terms of political self-interest, A. seems little better than C., and since these political terms are prominently raised in the play, the audience seems scripted, as it were, to contemplate this aspect of A's actions.
• example: treatment of Ismene, who is, importantly, equally as close as Polynices, but callously treated by the very woman who insists on the absolute priority of immediate sibling blood ties: this raises the question of whether her principal loyalty may well be to the eldest brother-- whom, since he was the attacker of the city, it would be traitorous for her to support
• In strict political terms, then, both C. and A. seem both very wrong-headed
• And the strict personal terms Antigone argues for seem undercut by the fact that her family is the kingly family of the realm, thus hard to divorce from the public realm: Creon, recall, is her uncle
• problematics of Antigone as the female hero (a contradiction in terms, for a Greek?)
• Note, importantly, that in the end
• Antigone hangs herself (and the gods do not intervene, despite hints earlier, during the burials, that the gods may be sympathetic), and her husband commits suicide
• Creon finds little happiness in his self-identification with the state ("I am the city!"), which by the end seems a hollow sort of power; nor in his royal family, for his heir, Haemon, has committed suicide, as has his wife, Eurydice, and he is cursed as well (by H.)!

Question two:  who's "male", who's "female"; what is "maleness", what is "femaleness"; and what does this have to do with the main themes of the play?
 

• Creon sets up the theme:
• 541: "I am not the man; she is, if she gets the victory"
• 593: "no woman is going to lord it over me!" But compare the rejoinders at 588ff: what is characteristically male, female? (Creon: absolutist, killer of enemies. Antigone: born to love, not hate [but the lover of death! -line 908!])
• Closed society of women in ancient Greece:
• 652: this shouldbe positive, but in the context seems (oddly, for an Athenian) negative, tyrannical
• so is maleness a good or bad trait?
• Women and anarchy:
• Anarchy (Greek = anarchia, a feminine noun): she is the root of all evil in the state; but the law (Greek = nomos, a masculine noun) is the bedrock of all that is good in the state. Creon: "we must defend the men who live by law, never let some woman triumph over us."
• And compare 739f: only a man who controls his household is fit to rule the state: highly ironic, given the events that follow!
• And compare especially 735f. Creon: "I'm going to kill her! That's right-- so let her cry for mercy, sing her humns to Zeus who defends all bonds of kindred blood." Note
• SACRILEGE
• association of Zeus, the principal MALE god, and principal force of order in the kosmos, with the female, Antigone, rather than with the "Zeus-cherished king" (kings, recall, derive their power from Zeus!)
• But note also that, throughout the play, there are two types of "law" spoken about: the one, nomos, is in Greek a masculine word, and refers to "human law," those codes established by legislatures and kings; the other, themis, a feminine word, is "divine law," that notion of inalienable rights and justice stemming from the fact of a divinity who cares about cosmic order and rightness: in general, Creon is speaking about nomos, Antigone about themis
so is femaleness a good or bad trait?

• Female, associated with the private, the household; male with the public, the state
• Female, curiously, assoc. with the divine law, male with the human law (the latter with surprisingly negative overtones!)

Some of what the play seems to be trying to get you to think through:

• conflict between loyalty to family and loyalty to the state
• which in Greek terms maps to the conflict between divine law and human law
• problematics of the hero: both the male hero who, like Creon, is a tyrant, and the female hero, Antigone, who at her best is wonderfully persistent, clear-sighted, determined, courageous, but at her worst, dogmatic, obstinate, solipsistic, and bent on personal glory
• the curious way in which maleness and femaleness associate themselves with the heroic character: is the female hero better for all her maleness?
• the curious way in which maleness and femaleness associate themselves with human law and "divine law"
• the curious way in which maleness and femaleness associate themselves with public (state) and private (family, household)
• and on these last two questions: we will come to grips more closely when we come to Aeschylus' Oresteia next week!

Polynices

Eteocles

Ismene

Antigone

Creon

Eurydice

Haemon

"Seven-gated" Thebes

the "Seven against Thebes" (the story of)