INTRODUCTION

Summary

Earliest trace of the story

§ 1. TheOedipus Tyrannus is concerned with the fall of the Theban king; the Coloneus, with the close of his life; and the Antigone, with a later episode in the fortunes of his children. But the order of composition was, Antigone, Tyrannus, Coloneus; and the first was separated from the last by perhaps more than thirty years of the poet's life. The priority of the Antigone admits of a probable explanation, which is not without interest. There is some ground for thinking that the subject–though not the treatment–was suggested by Aeschylus.

The sisters Antigone and Ismene are not mentioned by Homer, Hesiod, or Pindar. Antigone's heroism presupposes a legend that burial had been refused to Polyneices. Pindar knows nothing of such a refusal. He speaks of the seven funeralpyres provided at Thebes for the seven divisions of the Argive army. Similarly Pausanias records a Theban legend that the corpse of Polyneices was burned on the same pyre with that of Eteocles, and that the very flames refused to mingle. The refusal of burial was evidently an Attic addition to the story. It served to contrast Theban vindictiveness with Athenian humanity; for it was Theseus who ultimately buried the Argives at Eleusis. If Creon's edict, then, was an Attic invention, it may be conjectured that Antigone's resolve to defy the edict was also the conception of an Attic poet.