In
Greek mythologyGreek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
,
Antigone (pron ; ) is the daughter of
OedipusOedipus was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thus brought disaster on his city and family...
and
JocastaIn Greek mythology, Jocasta, also known as Jocaste , Epikastê, or Iokastê was a daughter of Menoeceus and Queen consort of Thebes, Greece. She was the wife of Laius. Wife and mother of Oedipus by Laius, and both mother and grandmother of Antigone, Eteocles, Polynices and Ismene by Oedipus...
, Oedipus' mother. The name may be taken to mean "unbending", coming from "anti-" (against, opposed to) and "-gon / -gony" (corner, bend, angle; ex: polygon), but has also been suggested to mean "opposed to motherhood", "in place of a mother", or "anti-generative", based from the root gonē, "that which generates" (related: gonos, "-gony"; seed, semen).
Classical depictions
Antigone is a daughter of the accidentally incestuous marriage between King
OedipusOedipus was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thus brought disaster on his city and family...
of
ThebesThebes is a city in Greece, situated to the north of the Cithaeron range, which divides Boeotia from Attica, and on the southern edge of the Boeotian plain. It played an important role in Greek myth, as the site of the stories of Cadmus, Oedipus, Dionysus and others...
and his mother
JocastaIn Greek mythology, Jocasta, also known as Jocaste , Epikastê, or Iokastê was a daughter of Menoeceus and Queen consort of Thebes, Greece. She was the wife of Laius. Wife and mother of Oedipus by Laius, and both mother and grandmother of Antigone, Eteocles, Polynices and Ismene by Oedipus...
. She is the subject of a popular story in which she attempts to secure a respectable burial for her brother
PolynicesIn Greek mythology, Polynices or Polyneices was the son of Oedipus and Jocasta. His wife was Argea. His father, Oedipus, was discovered to have killed his father and married his mother, and was expelled from Thebes, leaving his sons Eteocles and Polynices to rule...
, even though he was a traitor to Thebes and the law forbids even mourning for him, on pain of death.
In the oldest version of the story, the funeral of Polynices takes place during Oedipus' reign in Thebes, however, this is before he marries Antigone. However, in the best-known versions,
SophoclesSophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
tragediesTragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
Oedipus at ColonusOedipus at Colonus is one of the three Theban plays of the Athenian tragedian Sophocles...
and
AntigoneAntigone is a tragedy by Sophocles written in or before 442 BC. Chronologically, it is the third of the three Theban plays but was written first...
, it occurs in the years after Oedipus' banishment and death, and Antigone has to struggle against
CreonCreon is a figure in Greek mythology best known as the ruler of Thebes in the legend of Oedipus. He had two children with his wife, Eurydice: Megareus and Haemon...
. In Sophocles' version, both of Antigone's brothers are killed in battle against the state. After Oedipus' death, it was decided that the two brothers,
EteoclesIn Greek mythology, Eteocles was a king of Thebes, the son of Oedipus and either Jocasta or Euryganeia. The name is from earlier *Etewoklewes , meaning "truly glorious". Tawaglawas is thought to be the Hittite rendition of the name. Oedipus killed his father Laius and married his mother without...
and Polynices were to reign over Thebes taking turns. Eteocles, however, did not want to give away his power causing Polynices to leave Thebes to set up an army. In the fight against Thebes, the two brothers kill each other. After this event, Creon declares that, as punishment, Polynices' body must be left on the plain outside the city to rot and be eaten by animals. Eteocles, on the other hand had been buried as tradition warranted. Antigone determines this to be unjust, immoral and against the laws of the gods, and is determined to bury her brother regardless of Creon's law. She attempts to persuade her sister
IsmeneIsmene is the name of two women of Greek mythology. The more famous is a daughter and half-sister of Oedipus, daughter and granddaughter of Jocasta, and sister of Antigone, Eteocles, and Polynices. She appears in several plays of Sophocles: at the end of Oedipus the King, in Oedipus at Colonus and...
to join her, but fails. Antigone buries her brother by herself; eventually Creon's guards discover this and capture her. Antigone is brought before Creon, where she declares that she knew Creon's law but chose to break it, expounding upon the superiority of 'divine law' to that made by man. She defies his arguments, provoking his wrath and punishment.
Sophocles' Antigone ends in disaster, with Antigone hanging herself after being walled up, and Creon's son
HaemonAccording to Sophocles' play Antigone, Haemon or Haimon , was the son of Creon and Eurydice.When Oedipus stepped down as King of Thebes, he gave the kingdom to his two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, who both agreed to alternate the throne every year. However, they showed no concern for their...
(or Haimon), who loved Antigone, killing himself after finding her body. (Also see
OedipusOedipus was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thus brought disaster on his city and family...
for a variant of this story.) Queen
EurydiceIn Greek mythology, Eurydice was the wife of Creon, a king of Thebes. She appears briefly in Sophocles' Antigone, to kill herself after learning that her son Haemon and his betrothed, Antigone, had both committed suicide, from a messenger. She thrusts a sword into her heart and curses Creon for...
, wife of King Creon, also kills herself at the end of the story due to seeing such actions allowed by her husband. She had been forced to weave throughout the entire story and her death alludes to
The FatesThe Moirae, Moerae or Moirai , in Greek mythology, were the white-robed incarnations of destiny . Their number became fixed at three...
.
The dramatist
EuripidesEuripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...
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
DionysusDionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...
and is followed by the marriage of Antigone and Haemon.
Different elements of the legend appear in other places. A description of an ancient painting by Philostratus (
ImaginesImagines is a work in Ancient Greek in two volumes describing and explaining various artworks. The first volume is generally attributed to Philostratus of Lemnos, or possibly to his more famous father-in-law Philostratus of Athens. The second volume is by the grandson of Philostratus of Lemnos,...
ii. 29) refers to Antigone placing the body of Polynices on the funeral pyre, and this is also depicted on a
sarcophagusA sarcophagus is a funeral receptacle for a corpse, most commonly carved or cut from stone. The word "sarcophagus" comes from the Greek σαρξ sarx meaning "flesh", and φαγειν phagein meaning "to eat", hence sarkophagus means "flesh-eating"; from the phrase lithos sarkophagos...
in the
Villa Doria PamphiliThe Villa Doria Pamphili is a seventeenth century villa with what is today the largest landscaped public park in Rome, Italy. It is located in the quarter of Monteverde, on the Gianicolo , just outside the Porta San Pancrazio in the ancient walls of Rome where the ancient road of the Via Aurelia...
in
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. And in
Hyginus'Gaius Julius Hyginus was a Latin author, a pupil of the famous Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus. He was by Augustus elected superintendent of the Palatine library according to Suetonius' De Grammaticis, 20...
version of the legend, founded apparently on a tragedy by some follower of Euripides, Antigone, on being handed over by
CreonCreon is a figure in Greek mythology best known as the ruler of Thebes in the legend of Oedipus. He had two children with his wife, Eurydice: Megareus and Haemon...
to her lover Haemon 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. This leads to the discovery that Antigone is still alive. The demi-god
HeraclesHeracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...
then intercedes and pleads with Creon to forgive Haemon, but in vain. Haemon then kills Antigone and himself. The intercession by Heracles is also represented on a painted vase (circa 380-300 BC).
Adaptations
The story of Antigone has been a popular subject for books, plays, and other works, including:
- The Antigone
Antigone is a tragedy by Sophocles written in or before 442 BC. Chronologically, it is the third of the three Theban plays but was written first...
, one of the three Theban plays by SophoclesSophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
(497 BC - 406 BC) - The most famous adaptation
- Antigona, opera by Tommaso Traetta
Tommaso Michele Francesco Saverio Traetta was an Italian composer.-Biography:Traetta was born in Bitonto, a town near Bari, near the top of the heel of the boot of Italy. He eventually became a pupil of the composer, singer and teacher Nicola Porpora in Naples, and scored a first success with his...
, libretto by Marco ColtelliniMarco Coltellini was an Italian opera librettist and printer.He was probably born in Livorno and embarked on a career in the Church, but had to leave after fathering four daughters. He set up a printing shop in Livorno to publish the works of Enlightenment figures such as Francesco Algarotti and...
(1772)
- Antigona
Antigona is an Italian opera in three acts by the Czech composer Josef Mysliveček set to a libretto by Gaetano Roccaforte. All of Mysliveček's are of the serious type in Italian language referred to as opera seria.-Performance history:...
, opera by Josef MyslivečekJosef Mysliveček was a Czech composer who contributed to the formation of late eighteenth-century classicism in music...
, libretto by Gaetano Roccaforte (1774)
- Antigone, play by Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
(1889–1963)
- Antigone, full-length album by Heaven Shall Burn
Heaven Shall Burn is a German heavy metal band from Saalfeld, formed in 1996. They combine an aggressive metal sound with lyrics that show a militant support of anti-racism and fighting social injustice. All members of the band are vegan.-Biography:...
(2004)
- Antigone
Antigonae , written by Carl Orff, was first presented on 9 August 1949 under the direction of Ferenc Fricsay in the Felsenreitschule, Salzburg, Austria. Antigonae is in Orff's words a "musical setting" for the Greek tragedy by Sophocles of the same name...
, opera by Carl OrffCarl Orff was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana . In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential method of music education for children.-Early life:...
(1895–1982)
- Antigone, play by Jean Anouilh
Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh was a French dramatist whose career spanned five decades. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his 1943 play Antigone, an adaptation of Sophocles' Classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain's...
(1910–1987)
- "Antigone-Legend", for soprano and piano (text by Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
), by Frederic RzewskiFrederic Anthony Rzewski is an American composer and virtuoso pianist.- Biography :Rzewski began playing piano at age 5. He attended Phillips Academy, Harvard and Princeton, where his teachers included Randall Thompson, Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and Milton Babbitt...
(b. 1938)
- Αντιγόνη (Antigone), opera by Mikis Theodorakis
Mikis Theodorakis is one of the most renowned Greek songwriters and composers. Internationally, he is probably best known for his songs and for his scores for the films Zorba the Greek , Z , and Serpico .Politically, he identified with the left until the late 1980s; in 1989, he ran as an...
(b. 1925)
- Antigone (1990/1991), opera by Ton de Leeuw
Antonius Wilhelmus Adrianus de Leeuw was a Dutch composer. He was known for his experiments with microtonality....
(b. 1926)
- Antígona Furiosa (Furious Antigone), play by Griselda Gambaro
Griselda Gambaro is an Argentine writer, whose novels, plays, short stories, story tales, essays and novels for teenagers often concern the political violence in her home country that would develop into the Dirty War. One recurring theme is the desaparecidos and the attempts to recover their...
(b. 1928)
- "The Island
The Island is a play by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona.The apartheid-era drama, inspired by a true story, is set in an unnamed prison clearly based on South Africa's notorious Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was held for twenty-seven years...
", play by Athol FugardAthol Fugard is a South African playwright, novelist, actor, and director who writes in English, best known for his political plays opposing the South African system of apartheid and for the 2005 Academy-Award winning film of his novel Tsotsi, directed by Gavin Hood...
(b. 1932)
- La Pasión Según Antígona Pérez (The Passion of Antigone Pérez), adaptation of Sophocles by Puerto Rican
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
writer Luis Rafael SánchezDr. Luis Rafael Sánchez a.k.a. "Wico" is a Puerto Rican playwright. Possibly his best known play is La Pasión según Antigona Pérez , a tragedy based on the life of Olga Viscal Garriga-Early years:...
(b. 1936), updated to 20th century Latin America
- Tegonni, An African Antigone by Femi Osofisan
Babafemi Adeyemi Osofisan is a Nigerian writer known for his critique of societal problems and his use of African traditional performances and surrealism in some of his novels. A frequent theme his novels explore is the conflict between good and evil...
(b. 1946)
- Antigone, adaptation of Sophocles' play by Peruvian poet José Watanabe
José Watanabe was a Peruvian poet who won a number of literary awards.Watanabe was born in Laredo, a large sugar cane farm in northern Peru. His father was a Japanese immigrant and his mother was a Peruvian of Andean origin...
(b. 1946)
- Antigone, opera by Mark Alburger
Mark Alburger is a San Francisco Bay Area composer and conductor. He is the founder and music director of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, as well as the music director of the San Francisco Cabaret Opera...
(b. 1957)
- Antigone play by Andy Wibbels (b. 1975)
- Antigone, comic book by David Hopkins
David Hopkins is an American comic book writer and essayist. His works include Karma Incorporated and Emily Edison from publisher Viper Comics, Astronaut Dad, and a comic book adaptation of Antigone with frequent collaborator artist Tom Kurzanski. He writes a regular comic feature for D Magazine...
(b. 1977)
- Antigone by Henry Bauchau
Henry Bauchau is a Belgian psychoanalyst, and author of French language prose and poetry.In 1936, he became a trial lawyer in Brussels.He was a member of the Resistance in the Ardennes.From 1945 to 1951 he worked in publishing...
- The Burial at Thebes
The Burial at Thebes is a play by Irish Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, based on the fifth century BC tragedy Antigone by Sophocles. It is also an opera by Dominique Le Gendre...
by Seamus HeaneySeamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...
- The Burial At Thebes (2008) opera by Dominique Le Gendre to a libretto by Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...
and Derek WalcottDerek Alton Walcott, OBE OCC is a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2011 for White Egrets. His works include the Homeric epic Omeros...
- Antígona Vélez (1950) adaptation of Sophocles' play by Argentinean writer Leopoldo Marechal
Leopoldo Marechal was one of the most important Argentine writers of the twentieth century.- Biographical notes :...
(1900–1970)
- Antigonai (2009) an opera based on fragments by Sophocles and Hölderlin for three choirs and a women trio by Argentine composer Carlos Stella
Carlos Stella is an Argentine composer.Self-taught in composition, Stella studied piano at the Buenos Aires National Conservatory of Music and in 1985 he was invited by Krzysztof Penderecki to the Cracow Academy of Music...
- Antigone
Antigone, also known as The Antigone of Sophocles, is an adaptation by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht of Hölderlin's translation of Sophocles' tragedy. Written in 1947, it was first performed at the Chur Stadttheater in Switzerland in 1948, with Helene Weigel in the lead role....
by Bertolt BrechtBertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
, based on the translation by Friedrich HölderlinJohann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin was a major German lyric poet, commonly associated with the artistic movement known as Romanticism. Hölderlin was also an important thinker in the development of German Idealism, particularly his early association with and philosophical influence on his...
and published under the title Antigonemodell 1948.
Further reading
- Antigones by George Steiner
Francis George Steiner, FBA , is an influential European-born American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, translator, and educator. He has written extensively about the relationship between language, literature and society, and the impact of the Holocaust...
. 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
Judith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.Butler received her Ph.D...
. An examination of the figure of Antigone in literature and philosophy, particularly in SophoclesAntigone is a tragedy by Sophocles written in or before 442 BC. Chronologically, it is the third of the three Theban plays but was written first...
and in the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
, Luce IrigarayLuce Irigaray is a Belgian feminist, philosopher, linguist, psychoanalyst, sociologist and cultural theorist. She is best known for her works Speculum of the Other Woman and This Sex Which Is Not One .-Biography:...
and Jacques LacanJacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
.