Swerve ball argos

Antigone (ca. 441 B.C.E.)

By Sophocles (city-state of Athens, present-day Greece)

Translated from the Greek by Robert Fagles

CHARACTERS

ANTIGONE

daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta

ISMENE sister of Antigone

A CHORUS

of old Theban citizens and their LEADER

CREON

king of Thebes, uncle of Antigone and Ismene

A SENTRY

HAEMON

son of Creon and Eurydice

TIRESIAS a blind prophet

A MESSENGER

EURYDICE wife of Creon

Guards, attendants, and a boy

TIME AND SCENE: The royal house of Thebes. It is still night, and the invading armies of Argos have just been driven from the city. Fighting on opposite sides, the sons of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polynices, have killed each other in combat. Their uncle, CREON, is now king of Thebes.

Enter ANTIGONE, slipping through the central doors of the palace. She motions to her sister, ISMENE, who follows her cautiously toward an altar at the center of the stage.

ANTIGONE:

My own flesh and blood—dear sister, dear Ismene, how many griefs our father Oedipus handed down! Do you know one, I ask you, one grief

that Zeus will not perfect for the two of us1

1 the two of us: the intimate bond between the two sisters (and the two brothers) is emphasized in the original Greek by an untranslatable linguistic usage—the dual, a set of endings for verbs, nouns and adjectives that is used only when two subjects are concerned (there is a different set of endings—the plural—for more than two). Significantly, Antigone no longer uses these forms to speak of herself and her sister after Ismene refuses to help her bury their brother. [all footnotes are from the translator]

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while we still live and breathe? There's nothing,

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no pain—our lives are pain2—no private shame,

no public disgrace, nothing I haven't seen

in your griefs and mine. And now this:

an emergency decree, they say, the Commander

has just now declared for all of Thebes.

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What, haven't you heard? Don't you see?

The doom reserved for enemies3

marches on the ones we love the most.

ISMENE:

Not I, I haven't heard a word, Antigone.

Nothing of loved ones,

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no joy or pain has come my way, not since

the two of us were robbed of our two brothers,

both gone in a day, a double blow—

not since the armies of Argos vanished,

just this very night. I know nothing more,

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whether our luck's improved or ruin's still to come.

ANTIGONE:

I thought so. That's why I brought you out here,

past the gates, so you could hear in private.

ISMENE:

What's the matter? Trouble, clearly ...

you sound so dark, so grim.

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ANTIGONE:

Why not? Our own brothers' burial!

Hasn't Creon graced one with all the rites,

disgraced the other? Eteocles, they say,

has been given full military honors,

rightly so—Creon has laid him in the earth

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and he goes with glory down among the dead.

But the body of Polynices, who died miserably—

why, a city-wide proclamation, rumor has it,

forbids anyone to bury him, even mourn him.

He's to be left unwept, unburied, a lovely treasure

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for birds that scan the field and feast to their heart's content.

Such, I hear, is the martial law our good Creon