Antigone offers timeless lessons on the confrontation between secular power and religious freedom.
Sophocles is likely the greatest playwright in the history of civilization, with the obvious exception of Shakespeare. He lived for 90 years, spanning almost the entire fifth century BC, from 496 to 406-5. During his long life, which appears to have been spent entirely in Athens, he witnessed both the rise and fall of the Athenian empire, a period of great social upheaval and political agitation.
He is best known for the Oedipus cycle, also known as the three Theban plays: Antigone, Oedipus Rex, and Oedipus at Colonus. There are two ways to read this cycle of plays. They can be read either in the order of their composition, as listed above, or in the chronological order of the story they tell. Oedipus Rex tells of the rise and fall of Oedipus, King of Thebes; Oedipus at Colonus tells of Oedipus's old age and death; Antigone picks up the story of Antigone, Oedipus's daughter.
The advantage of reading them in the order of their composition is that we see the growth of the playwright's wisdom reflected in his work: Antigone is full of the vigor and brilliance of political idealism; Oedipus Rex is a mature reflection on the mystery and meaning of suffering; Oedipus at Colonus pushes the reflection on suffering to deeper levels of understanding, answering the questions posed by Oedipus Rex. Oedipus at Colonus, which was written when Sophocles was a very old man and was only performed after his death, reflects the wisdom of the playwright's 90 years of accumulated and philosophically digested experience.
However, it is in Antigone that we find timeless lessons on the confrontation between secular power and religious freedom.
The play begins as the dust settles on a battle in which Oedipus's sons fought on opposing sides and killed each other in combat. Creon, King of Thebes, declares that one brother, Eteocles, is to be buried with full military honors, but that the other, Polynices, is a traitor to the state who must not be buried with dignity. On the contrary, Polynices is to be left to rot where he fell, food for vultures and wild dogs.
The decision of Antigone, the sister of the two fallen warriors, to give her brother a dignified religious burial, in defiance of state law, sets in motion a drama in which timeless legal and moral principles are invoked. Does the state have the power to deny anyone a dignified burial according to religious rites? Is the power of the state "under God" or is it a law unto itself? How should believers respond to anti-religious laws? How should the state treat religious dissenters who disobey its laws?
Forced to choose between the rites and rights of religion and the law of the land, Antigone chooses to obey the gods in defiance of the law. Her logic is theological. Creon's law forbidding the religious burial of her brother is "an outrage to the gods." Seeing reality in terms of eternal destiny, she fears offending the gods more than she fears the state's power to execute her for breaking its laws. "I have longer to please the dead than please the living here," she says.
"In the kingdom down below, I'll rest forever. Faced with a choice between obeying the temporal laws of mortals or the eternal laws, she proclaims that she will not dishonor the laws that the gods hold in honor."
Opposed to Antigone's religious perspective is the secularism of Creon, who declares that "whoever places a friend above the good of his country is nothing." Love of country and obedience to the state outweigh love of neighbor.
In the midst of this epic struggle between two opposing worldviews, the religious and the secular, the chorus, representing the people as a whole, sympathizes with Antigone but fears to express its disagreement in the face of state power. The silent majority is silenced by fear. Antigone tells Creon that the members of the chorus would praise her for her stance "if their lips weren't locked by fear." It is only through fear of the tyrannical state that the people "hold their tongues in check."
The plot thickens when we discover that Haemon, Creon's son, is engaged to Antigone. Haemon tries to reason with his father by reminding him that "only the gods endow a man with reason, the fairest of all their gifts, a treasure." He also echoes Antigone's words when he tells Creon that the silent majority is on Antigone's side and is only silent out of fear:
The common man … dreads your glance,
he'd never say anything unpleasant to your face.
But it's for me to catch the murmurs in the dark,
The way the city weeps for this young girl.
"No woman," they say, "has ever less deserved death,"
And such a brutal death for such a glorious deed…
Death? She deserves a crown of gold!"
That's what they say, and the rumor spreads in secret,
darkly…
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Creon, blinded by his own proud arrogance, will not listen to reason, even when the blind prophet Tiresias warns him of the terrible punishment of the gods that awaits him if he remains obstinate in his war against the religious rights of the living and the dead. Taking up the motif of Homer's epics, Sophocles shows us the tragic consequences of Creon's obstinacy in how his pride precedes his fall. This moral is recalled unequivocally in the final lines of the play, spoken by the chorus:
Wisdom is by far the greatest part of joy,
and reverence towards the gods must be safeguarded.
The mighty words of the proud are paid in full
by mighty blows of fate, and at last
these blows will teach us wisdom.
This article was originally published by the National Catholic Register (Article Link). It is republished and translated with the author's permission.