The Virtues of Antigone

Antigone was the daughter of Oedipus, King of Thebes. After the dramatic end and disappearance of her father who had blinded himself, her uncle Creon succeeded to the throne. Antigone’s two brothers, Polynices and Eteocles, fought and killed each other. Creon issued an order forbidding the burial of Polynices because he fought against Thebes. Antigone rebelled against her uncle and his order. Her courage made her an iconic heroine with influence lasting to this day.

War and declining freedom

“In the first few months of 2026,” says Helen Shaw, theater critic for the New York Times, “Antigone is visiting New York four times, in four different stage adaptations. (Her omnipresence is like a rush of white blood cells — there’s an infection somewhere in the body politic.)… Sophocles was writing when both theater and democracy were young; the secrets of each are embedded in the play. At its deepest point, the tragedy warns us not to obey only a single ethos.”

True, the infection is that of the illegal war the US and Israel are fighting against Persia / Iran. Israel led Trump to this war. But the US has made war almost a business and industry. According to the journalist Patrick Strickland:

“Since 1776… the United States has intervened militarily in foreign countries nearly 400 times. Since September 11, 2001, U.S.-led counterterrorism operations have reached at least 78 countries. As of 2021, the U.S. had spent more than $8 trillion on its Global War on Terror, a series of conflicts that the Cost of War project at Brown University estimates to have killed at least 900,000 people. Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s budget has reached $1 trillion and defense contractors continue to pump tens of millions of dollars into lawmakers’ pockets each election cycle.”

This war-business as usual becomes a devouring monster of freedom of speech, economics, morality, politics and the future of democracy. Without a third party strong enough to challenge both war Democratic and Republican parties, what could a citizen do? In addition, the close and strong alliance between US and Israel is not quite a normal connection. “By fully joining a partner that is reconciled to endlessly fighting,” says Jon B. Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Wahington, DC, “United States has given up its most valuable role in the Middle East: the outside power with a wide array of economic and diplomatic tools that Israel needs precisely because it stands apart. What was once a win-win has the markings of a lose-lose. Future administrations may find themselves spending years picking up the pieces of an alliance that they conclude grew too close.”

The result of that “close” US-Israel relationship brought us war and fear. Too much fear. The fear of losing our freedom explains the “omnipresence” of Antigone in New York theaters. Hence, the resurrection of the Greek heroine Antigone who told her uncle tyrant Creon he did not know what he was doing in ordering that no one had the right to bury Polynices. She said to Creon that ignoring the gods and their divine traditions was not a good idea. She argued eloquently that those sacred traditions were forever.

That audacious daring and courage — risking her life in defense of freedom and the divine tradition she inherited — makes her a superheroine. In an age of historical amnesia, cowardliness and plutocratic politics and governance and silence, Antigone leads the way.

What Helen Shaw calls ethos, Sophocles meant the tyrannical law of Creon, ancle of Antigone and King of Thebes. Creon declared that Antigone’s brother Polynices did not deserve burial. His body would be left for dogs. Such an order profoundly unsettled Antigone and increased her suffering. She decided she had to bury her brother’s body, even symbolically. Sacred laws and traditions demanded that respect for the dead. And the dead man was her own brother, doubling her suffering and responsibilities. She secretly found her brother’s body and poured over it some soil, thus symbolically buried and honored her dead brother. However, the news that Antigone had “buried” her brother reached Creon. The king confronted Antigone but she had no apologies for her action, which, she said to her ancle, was the fulfillment of a sacred law of the gods. She made clear to Creon that the sacred law for burying the dead superseded his or any other human law (Sophocles, Antigone 450-459).

Creon found the behavior of Antigone not only illegal but offensive to him personally. Acting not as an uncle but like a tyrant, he condemned Antigone to death by entombing her in a room to die slowly by starvation. His son, Haemon, however, was in love with Antigone. Unable to free Antigone, he committed suicide, thus compounding the tragedy of Antigone.

Epilogue

Sophocles said the world was a very dangerous place. Man, he repeated in his tragic and political play, Antigone, was the fiercest of all animals. Yet man, he wrote in his Trojan War play, Philoctetes, had precarious fortunes and plenty of misfortunes. Man was danger. That’s why Sophocles sought confidence and strength from the old culture of the Greek people and their gods in particular. They were permanent because they had passed the test of time. If only the Greeks could conquer their own Troy, they would be in a position to continue with their reverence for the gods and enjoy the world of their own making. Their freedom would be secure. That was the essence of Sophocles — and of all Greek tragedy.

Americans are far removed from the Greeks. But the extraordinary conditions of the war against Iran and the consequences of the decline of freedom may inspire us to get closer to the Greeks. We can learn from their ceaseless passion for freedom, science and civilization.

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