Antigone
Ἀντιγόνη
The daughter of Oedipus who defied a king's decree to bury her brother.
She was the daughter who led her blind father to the very end — and the one who stood face to face against Creon's ban on burial.
Her line stands at the center of the tragedy: "Your edict does not outrank the unwritten, unfailing laws of the gods."
Walled up alive in a cave, she took her own life — and her betrothed Haemon and Creon's wife followed her in death.
Since Hegel, this play has been the standard case of "tragedy as right clashing with right" — for Creon, too, has his reasons to defend the state.
SourcesSophocles, Antigone
Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone are often called Sophocles' trilogy, but they were never planned as one. Antigone was written more than thirty years first — the story order and the writing order run in opposite directions.