Notes on “Antigone”

Nikiforos Lytras, “Antigone in front of the dead Polynices” (1865), National Gallery of Athens. via Wikimedia Commons

The play opens with two sisters, Antigone and Ismene, arguing about their duties to family versus those to the state. Their two brothers have just killed each other while leading opposing sides of a civil war in Thebes. Their uncle Creon has now taken charge of the city, and has decreed that one of the brothers, Polynices, is to be denied a funeral: “he must be left unburied, his corpse / carrion for the birds and dogs to tear, / an obscenity for the…