“Ismene, my own true sister, O dear one, / Sharing our common bond of birth, do you know / One evil left to us by Oidipous, / Our father, that has not been brought down on / The two of us by Zeus, while we still live?” 

In Antigone’s first lines, she reveals several facets of her character. First, she is shown to honor her family, calling her sister “true” and “dear one.” She also acknowledges the doom that her family has brought her and her inability to cope with the unfair conditions of her life. Her honorable response to the ill fate of her family in attempting to bury her brother will bring about all the events of the play that follow.

“I will commit a holy crime, for I / Must please those down below for a longer time / Than those up here, since there I’ll lie forever.” 

Antigone understands that to follow divine law, she must break human law. In her oxymoron “holy crime,” Antigone reveals the conflict between divine and human law—her crime, even though it is unlawful, is holy. In justifying her actions as pleasing the dead and the gods of the underworld, Antigone shows where her ultimate values lie and foreshadows the fact that she will die for this act.

“It's wrong to go hunting for what's impossible.” 

Rationalization, the justification of unjust actions based on illegitimate arguments, is a consistent problem Antigone must face in arguing her case for the just burial of her brother. Here, Ismene provides an example of such rationalization, couching her unwillingness to assist Antigone in a moral argument. Antigone, however, will prove that even though she does something legally wrong, she acts morally. It is possible to do what’s right, but it may cost us our lives when those who rule think otherwise.  

“Seven captains attacking / Seven gates abandoned / Their bronze weapons / That now become / A tribute to battle-turning / Zeus, the god of trophies— / Except for those two / Doomed, cursed men who / Though born from one father / and one mother thrust / Their town mutually / Victorious spears into / Each other and shared one death in common.” 

In the first ode, the Chorus recount the battle of Polyneikes and Eteokles. In siding with Eteokles against Polyneikes and his Argive army, they announce their loyalty to Kreon. Here, as well as getting the audience up to speed on the action that has transpired immediately before the beginning of the play, Sophocles links his own work with that of his contemporary and competitor in Athenian theater competitions, Aeschylus. Aeschylus tells the story of this battle at length in his play Seven Against Thebes; with Antigone, Sophocles picks up the action exactly where Aeschylus left off. 

“Now I hold all the power and the throne, / Because of my close kinship to the dead. / It is impossible to know completely / The soul, the mind, the judgment of a man / Until we see his mettle tested against / His duties and his way with the laws.”

Kreon announces his own right to kingship as the closest surviving male relative of Oedipus, holding “all the power” in the absolutist monarchy of Thebes. Kreon argues the best way to know a man’s soul is his accord with laws, referring both to his own duty as king to uphold the law and his subjects’ duty to obey it. His words also create dramatic irony, as Kreon’s acts against laws higher than his own will prove his ineffectiveness as a ruler. 

“For a long time in this city, men / Who barely can put up with me have raised / A secret uproar, they've been tossing their heads, / They haven't kept their necks under the yoke— / As justly they should have done— and been content / With me. I know what all this is about. / Those are the ones who bribed the guards to do this.” 

Responding to the Chorus leader’s suspicion that the burial of Polyneikes may have been the will of the gods, Kreon rages, arguing that discontents of his rule in Thebes bribed the guard to bury the prince. This retort reveals two things about Kreon. First, he does not trust his guards or counselors and assumes they are lying if their statements displease him. Second, he is not universally loved by the people of Thebes and rules instead by fear and disrespect, comparing his people to farm animals. These lines reveal Kreon’s real reason for leaving Polyneikes unburied: to strike fear into his enemies. 

“Honoring the / Laws of the earth / And the justice of / The gods, to which / Men swear, he stands / High in his city. / But outside any / City is he who dares / To consort with / What is wrong: let / Him who might do / Such things not / Be the companion / At my hearth nor have / The same thoughts as I!” 

Concepts of law and the best paths to honoring them are central to Antigone, and the conflict between two sets of law—civil and divine—brings about Antigone’s death. In the ode that closes Scene 2, the concept of honoring the law is again brought to the fore. Here, after describing all the ways that man is more savage than any beast, the Chorus argues that law is what allows all men to live in cities (i.e. to be a part of civilization). Those who do not honor civic law must remain “outside” the city—living as beasts. The Chorus represents the polis, and this statement announces their fear of Kreon as well as their loyalty to him as the maker of the city’s laws. This equation of the city with its laws recalls Ismene and Antigone’s conversation about breaking the law outside the city gates in the scene prior. 

“My Lord, mortals should not swear anything’s / Impossible!” 

Spoken by the guard to Kreon, this line directly conflicts with that of Ismene: Where Ismene states that “it’s wrong to go hunting for what’s impossible” (106), this statement decrees that only the gods decide what is truly possible and impossible. For the second time in the text, a conflict between divine and mortal law is shown, and as in the first case of Antigone discussing her “holy crime,” divine law is seen as superior.  

“Understand that rigid wills are those / Most apt to fall, and that the hardest iron / Forged in fire for greatest strength, you'll see / Is often broken, shattered. And with only / A small sharp bit, I've noticed, spirited / Horses are disciplined. For grand ideas / Are not allowed in someone who's the slave / Of others […]” 

Kreon’s threat to Antigone comes just after she has insulted his rule, saying his legitimacy to make laws is not on par with that of the gods. Antigone has shown herself indignant and rebellious. Here Kreon intimates that he will break Antigone’s will through punishment, like one breaks a horse. However, in saying that “grand ideas / Are not allowed in someone who's the slave / Of others […],” Kreon can also be thought to discuss his own position. Though he might like to spare Antigone the death he proclaimed would face any who buried Polyneikes’ corpse, to do so would reveal his hypocrisy to the people of Thebes. Just like Antigone is the slave of Kreon, Kreon sees himself the slave of the people’s will. This passage is therefore important as it shows the synonymy between the positions of Kreon and Antigone, at least as Kreon sees it.

“Antigone: One-man rule / Brings with it many blessings— especially / That it can do and say whatever it wants. 

Kreon: You alone among the Thebans see it this way.” 

Athens, unlike Thebes, was a democracy, where citizens (land-owning males) could elect their leadership. Here Sophocles honors his Athenian audience and suggests their superiority to other Greek cities by highlighting the problem of absolutism: that one man makes the rules. Kreon’s response that the Thebans do not see it this way again signals an Athenian superiority on one level, while also showing Kreon’s ignorance of good government. Furthermore, Kreon has previously stated that there are Thebans who have conspired against him for years, suggesting even he understands that his kingship is failing the people. 

“Of mortal beings comes / Nothing great that lies / Beyond the reach of ruin.” 

In its ode on the cruel fate of the house of Oedipus, the Chorus makes a remark that reflects on the situation of many characters. All the characters live under the law of the gods, who decide their fate. No matter how powerful they become, they can still be ruined. This was true of Oedipus, who was born a prince and became king. It is true of Kreon, who holds absolute power but fears losing it, and it is true of Antigone, who, though a princess, cannot escape execution. 

“Soon we’ll know, better than / the seers.” 

Seers like the Oracle at Delphi and blind Teiresias were the closest the ancient Greeks ever came to words directly from their gods. These humans had a special place in Greek society, as they were able to foretell the future through prophecy. These lines foreshadow the eventual arrival of Tiresias and his admonition of Kreon for his ill act of leaving Polyneikes unburied. Kreon here displays his own inability for foresight, as well as his lack of respect of the seers’ trade, in suggesting that he can receive the same level of information through simple conversation. 

“Now that I've caught her as the only one / In all the city who openly defied me, / I won't be seen as false to my own word / By all the city— I'll kill her.” 

Here Kreon reveals his true motivation for executing Antigone: He does not wish to be seen as weak by his subjects. This execution will serve as an example of his mercilessness to those subjects who oppose him, as he previously referred to in Scene 2.

“At last what pointless waste of effort it is / To worship what is down below with Hades.” 

Throughout the text, multiple characters refer to the gods down below, espousing a chthonic (underworldly) vision of Greek divinity. In this play, this view is seemingly extended to all the gods and not only those that rule the underworld (Hades and Persephone). In these lines, Kreon dishonors both Antigone, who puts more credence in the laws that govern death than life, and the gods themselves, saying their worship is pointless. As the play has progressed, we have watched Kreon become a more and more easily detestable character. Here his outright disregard for worship of the gods further marks him out as an antagonist.

“Do you not go with glory and / Praise when you disappear / Chanting. Into that place where the / Bodies of the dead are / Hidden? Not struck down by / Diseases that waste one / Away, not having earned / The deadly wages of / The sword, but answering only / To the law of yourself, you / Are the only mortal who / Will go down alive into Hades.” 

Just as it is for us today, death was known as inevitable to the ancient Greeks. Here, the Chorus members try to give Antigone some comfort when they see her mourning her own death. They remind her that, though she dies, she does so honorably, which is a better fate than most people receive in this life. 

“Of all my cares, you / Have touched the one most painful to me: / My father's doom—recurring / Like the plowing / Of a field three Times—and the ruin / Of us all—the famed / Family of the Labdakids! Ah, my mother's disaster / Of a marriage bed, / And the self-incestuous / Coupling of my father / With my ill-fated Mother! / From such / As they, I—Who have been made / Miserable in my mind— / Was begotten! Under a / Curse, unmarried, I / Go back to them, having / No other home but Theirs.” 

When the Chorus reminds Antigone of her doomed fate due to the incest of her father, the strong young woman breaks down in an eruption of self-grief. Referencing the disaster of her birth, she proclaims the deep truth of her life—as the child of her parents, she has no home but theirs, and this is a home of death and doom. The thrice-plowed field is the three generations of Oedipus family struck down by ill fate—first his father, Laius, and mother, Jocasta, then himself, and finally Antigone.

“Let the close-walled tomb / Wrap arms around her, as I've ordered, leave / Her there alone, deserted, where she can choose / Either to die, or in that sort of house / To go on living, in the tomb—as for us, / We're pure as far as that girl is concerned. But she'll be deprived of any house up here!”

In sentencing Antigone to die in a cave, Kreon pushes her from his own house and to the house of death. His denying of her a “house up here” marks that she now has no place either in his kingdom or in his familial home. Furthermore, she has no ability to continue her own house, her familial line. Like Polyneikes, whom Kreon saw as forfeiting his citizenship of Thebes when he attacked it, Antigone is now an outcast, and her only home is death. 

“Without a nuptial bed, without / A wedding ceremony, and receiving / No share of marriage nor of rearing children. / Deserted by those close to me, and destined / For ill, I come while still alive to the cave / Of the dead dug deep underground. And what / Justice of the gods have I transgressed? And why / Should I, in my misfortune, keep looking to / The gods for help?” 

At her final sentencing, and moments before she will be led away, Antigone is in complete despair. This moment is filled with pathos, one in which we can look to Antigone with pity. Here, she questions whether she should have trusted in the gods in the first place, when doing so led to the fate she now has. Soon, however, she will return to the personal strength that characterizes her. 

“Look!—you rulers of Thebes—On the last, solitary / Member of the royal / House, what things, / From what men, I must suffer / For having been / Reverent toward reverence!” 

In her final words before being taken to her tomb, Antigone bids all of Thebes (and by extension, all of the audience) to look upon the inglorious death of a Theban princess. She reminds them, in referencing her royal house, of the ill fate that hangs above the heads of all those who remain royal. 

“Know this, / My son: making bad choices is something shared / By all men, but when a man goes wrong, he's not / Still ill-advised and not ill-situated / If he tries to rectify the evil he / Has fallen into and stops insisting that / He will not move. Stubbornness will earn / The charge of botching things!” 

The Greek gods are a vengeful and petty group, but Teiresias tells Kreon that he still has a chance to please them and avoid doom if he corrects his mistake. The real folly of the fool is not making mistakes but failing to correct them when they have seen the error of their ways. Now that Kreon knows the gods are displeased with his actions regarding Polyneikes, he must correct them. 

“You will not put that man in a grave. / And even if the eagles of Zeus want / To seize him and to carry him as food / Up to the throne of their god!” 

In his rage, Kreon now openly blasphemes even the highest god, Zeus. Through Teiresias has told him that leaving Polyneikes unburied has displeased the gods, Kreon will not change his actions. This refusal leads to his son’s and wife’s deaths. 

“Does no man know, does no man understand / […] the best of all we own is prudence?” 

Teiresias, echoing Kreon’s own words about the most valuable trait of any person being obedience, indicates that the greatest prudence is to the gods. Admonishing Kreon himself for his lack of obedience to laws that transcend his own, Teiresias brings the two sets of laws running through the play—mortal and divine—into the same conversation once again. 

“One corpse / Atop another corpse, he lies there now, / Desolate boy, who in the end has had / His wedding ceremony—but in the house / Of Hades, having shown to all men that / Sheer folly is much the worst of all man’s evils.” 

This violent image of the dead bodies of Haimon and Antigone describes them in a bloody inversion of the marriage bed. This image both honors their love and intensifies the tragedy of their death together. In the end, the two were fated to be wed, but only in death.

“Pile up your wealth at home, if you so wish, / And live in the style of a king—but if enjoyment / Of things like these is absent, I wouldn't pay / The shadow of thin smoke to anyone / For what's left afterward, compared to joy.” 

Before speaking the news of Antigone’s death, a messenger compares the pain Kreon will soon feel to his life of luxury. In his comparison, no man would trade his life for the bitter fate Kreon is about to experience, even for the wealth of a king.