In Greek mythology, Antigone ( ; ) was a Theban princess and a character in several ancient Greek tragedies. She was the daughter of Oedipus, king of Thebes; her mother/grandmother was either Jocasta or, in another variation of the myth, Euryganeia. She was the sister of Polynices, Eteocles, and Ismene.

Antigone appears in three 5th century BC tragic plays written by Sophocles, known collectively as the three Theban plays, with her being the protagonist of the eponymous tragedy Antigone. She makes a brief appearance at the end of Aeschylus' Seven against Thebes, and her story was also the subject of Euripides' now lost play of the same name. While Antigone may not have many appearances throughout Greek Myth, Sophocles' play has led to Antigone receiving a revered and long-lasting legacy.

In Sophocles

The story of Antigone was addressed by the fifth-century BC Greek playwright Sophocles in his Theban plays:

Oedipus Rex

thumb|246x246px|Oedipus and Antigone by [[Aleksander Kokular (1825–1828), National Museum, Warsaw.]]Antigone and her sister Ismene are seen at the end of Oedipus Rex as Oedipus laments the "shame" and "sorrow" he is leaving his daughters to. He then begs Creon to watch over them, but in his grief reaches to take them with him as he is led away. Creon prevents him from taking the girls out of the city with him. Neither of them is named in the play.

Oedipus at Colonus

Antigone serves as her father's guide in Oedipus at Colonus, as she leads him into the city where the play takes place. Antigone resembles her father in her stubbornness and doomed existence.

Euripides's Lost Play

The dramatist Euripides also wrote a play called Antigone, which is lost, but some of the text was preserved by later writers and in passages in his Phoenissae. In Euripides, the calamity is averted by the intercession of Dionysus and is followed by the marriage of Antigone and Hæmon. Antigone also plays a role in the Phoenissae.

Appearances Elsewhere

Different elements of the legend appear in other places. The 4th century tragedian Astydamas wrote a play about Antigone that is now lost. A description of an ancient painting by Philostratus (Imagines ii. 29) refers to Antigone placing the body of Polynices on the funeral pyre, and this is also depicted on a sarcophagus in the Villa Doria Pamphili in Rome. And in Hyginus's version of the legend, apparently founded on a tragedy by a follower of Euripides, Antigone, on being handed over by Creon to her lover Hæmon to be slain, is secretly carried off by him and concealed in a shepherd's hut, where she bears him a son, Maeon. When the boy grows up, he attends some funeral games at Thebes, and is recognized by the mark of a dragon on his body, which only appears on dependents of the Spartoi, the first people of Thebes. This leads to the discovery that Antigone is still alive. The intercession by Heracles is also represented on a painted vase (circa 380–300 BC). References to Antigone can also be found in Seneca's Phoenissae and in Statius's Thebais.

Genealogy

<gallery class="center" heights="145" widths="145" mode="packed-hover">

File:Oedipe et Antigone, Johann Peter Krafft (1809).png|Oedipe et Antigone by Johann Peter Krafft, 1809

File:Oedipus and Antigone by Franz Dietrich.jpg|Oedipus and Antigon by Franz Dietrich

File:Oedipus and Antigone (Eckersberg).jpg|Oedipus and Antigone by C. W. Eckersberg (1812)

File:Per Gabriel Wickenberg - Oedipus och Antigone.jpg|Oedipus and Antigone by Per Wickenberg (1833)

File:Ribelles-edipo y antigona.JPG|Edipo y Antigona by José Ribelles (circa 1800)

File:The Plague of Thebes.jpg|Oedipus and Antigone by Charles Jalabert (1842)

File:Emil Teschendorff - King Oedipus.jpg|Oedipus and Antigon

File:Antoni Brodowski - Oedipus and Antigone - Google Art Project.jpg|Oedipus and Antigon by Antoni Brodowski (1828)

File:Antigone And The Body Of Polynices - Project Gutenberg eText 14994.png|Antigone and the body of Polynices (Project Gutenberg)

File:Baschet, André Marcel - Ödipus verurteilt Polyneikes - 1883.jpg|Ödipus (mit Ismene und Antigone) verurteilt Polyneikes by Marcel Baschet (1883)

File:Character sketches of romance, fiction and the drama (1892) (14784688512).jpg|Antigone and Ismene

File:Lytras nikiforos antigone polynices.jpeg|Antigone in front of the dead Polynices by Nikiforos Lytras (1865)

File:Sébastien Norblin Antigone et Polynice.JPG|Antigone donnant la sépulture à Polynice by Sébastien Norblin (1825)

File:Oedipus and Antigone - Charles Thévenin - ABDAG000101.jpg|Oedipus and Antigone by Charles Thévenin, Aberdeen Archives, Gallery & Museums Collection

</gallery>

Cultural references

In modern times, Antigone is invoked as a symbol of heroism.

Adaptations

The story of Antigone has been a popular subject for books, plays, and other works, including:

  • Antigone, one of the three extant Theban plays by Sophocles (497 BC406 BC), the most famous adaptation
  • Antigone, a play by Euripides (c. 480406 BC) which is now lost except for some fragments
  • Antigone (1631), a play by Thomas May
  • Antigona, opera by Tommaso Traetta, libretto by Marco Coltellini (1772)
  • Antigona, opera by Josef Mysliveček, libretto by Gaetano Roccaforte (1774)
  • Antigone (1841), settings of the choruses by Felix Mendelssohn as incidental music for a performance of Johann Jakob Christian Donner's translation of Sophocles
  • Antigone, opera by Arthur Honegger (1892–1955), libretto by Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
  • Antigonae (Salzburg 1949), opera by Carl Orff (1895–1982)
  • Antigone (1944), French adaptation of Sophocles's play by Jean Anouilh (1910–1987) performed during the Nazi occupation of Paris
  • "Antigone-Legend", for soprano and piano (text by Bertolt Brecht), by Frederic Rzewski (1938–2021) and presented as a play in two slightly different versions in 1948 and 1951
  • Αντιγόνη (Antigone), ballet by Mikis Theodorakis (b. 1925), 1959
  • Αντιγόνη (Antigone), opera by Mikis Theodorakis (b. 1925), 1995–96
  • Antigone (1990/1991), opera by Ton de Leeuw (b. 1926)
  • Another Antigone, play by A. R. Gurney (b. 1930)
  • Antigone (1961), a film directed by Yorgos Javellas, starring Irene Papas
  • The Burial at Thebes (2004), by Seamus Heaney, adapted into a 2008 opera with music by Dominique Le Gendre
  • Antígona Vélez (1950), adaptation of Sophocles' play by Argentine writer Leopoldo Marechal (1900–1970)
  • Antigona (1960), a play by Dominik Smole
  • Antigone (1948), by Bertolt Brecht, based on the translation by Friedrich Hölderlin and published under the title Antigonemodell 1948 An English translation of Brecht's version of the play is available
  • Antigone (2019), a film by Sophie Deraspe
  • Antigone (This Play I Read in High School) by Anna Ziegler, a play that premiered at The Public Theater in 2026

Analysis

In the works of Hegel, in particular in his discussion of Sittlichkeit in his Phenomenology of Spirit and his Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Antigone is figured as exposing a tragic rift between the so-called feminine "Divine Law," which Antigone represents, and the "Human Law," represented by Creon.

The Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain considers Antigone as the "heroine of the natural law:"

:she was aware of the fact that, in transgressing the human law and being crushed by it, she was obeying a higher commandment—that she was obeying laws that were unwritten, and that had their origin neither today nor yesterday, but which live always and forever, and no one knows where they have come from.

The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan writes about the ethical dimension of Antigone in his Seminar VII, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. Others who have written on Antigone include theorist Judith Butler, in their book Antigone's Claim, as well as philosopher Slavoj Žižek, in various works, including Interrogating the Real (Bloomsbury: London, 2005) and The Metastases of Enjoyment (Verso: London, 1994).

Contemporary productions

A new translation of Antigone into English by the Canadian poet Anne Carson has been used in a production of the play (March 2015) at the Barbican directed by Ivo van Hove and featuring Juliette Binoche as Antigone. This production was broadcast as a TV movie on April 26, 2015. The play was transferred to the BAM Harvey Theatre at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, running from September 24 to October 4, 2015.

References

Further reading

  • Antigones by George Steiner. An examination of the legacy of the myth and its treatment in Western art, literature, and thought in drama, poetry, prose, philosophic discourse, political tracts, opera, ballet, film, and even the plastic arts.
  • Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death by Judith Butler. An examination of the figure of Antigone in literature and philosophy, particularly in Sophocles and in the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Luce Irigaray and Jacques Lacan.
  • Rayor, Diane J. (2011) Sophocles’ Antigone. Cambridge University Press. Translation with introduction and notes.
  • Söderbäck, Fanny, ed. Feminist Readings of Antigone. New York: SUNY Press, 2010. . Including classical texts by Judith Butler, Bracha Ettinger, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and Adriana Cavarero.
  • Wilmer, S. E., and Zukauskaite, Audrone, eds. Interrogating Antigone. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. . Including recent texts by Judith Butler, Bracha L. Ettinger, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray.
  • Antigone – a review of the Antigone myth and the various productions of her story