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Sophocles, Antigone 1226–301

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Grace M. Ledbetter
Grace M. Ledbetter
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

‘Unhappy boy, what a deed you have done! What came into your mind? What disaster destroyed your reason?’ This version of 1228–9, by Andrew Brown in his recent commentary, represents the majority opinion. But what ‘deed’ has Haemon done that justifies such an outburst? Jebb, followed by Kamerbeek and Brown, claims that the deed which causes Creon to wail aloud with charges of insanity is Haemon's entry into Antigone's tomb. Kamerbeek and Brown justify the extremity of Creon's reaction by claiming that Creon knows that Haemon intends to kill himself. But is it reasonable to suppose that Creon's first reaction to the shocking scene of Antigone's hanging corpse and Haemon helplessly wailing would be that Haemon is on the verge of killing himself? Creon has not had time to predict his son's actions and his screams of dismay are most naturally read as a reaction to something he sees before his eyes. It would also be strange if Creon had absolutely no reaction to Antigone's death; he expected to find her alive.

Type
Articles
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , May 1991 , pp. 26 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

2 Cf. Jebb, , The Antigone of Sophocles (Cambridge, 1902), p. 223Google Scholar, Kamerbeek, J. C., The Plays of Sophocles, Part III: The Antigone (Leiden, 1978), pp. 197–8Google Scholar, and Brown, A., Sophocles: Antigone (Warminster, 1987), p. 221.Google Scholar

3 Cf. Adams, S. M., Sophocles the Playwright (Toronto, 1957), pp. 57–8Google Scholar, and Calder, William M. III, ‘Was Antigone Murdered?’, GRBS 3 (1960), 31–5.Google Scholar

4 We may also want to ask ourselves what Haemon's intention possibly could have been in breaking into Antigone's tomb. After the fight with his father, who refused to yield, the most natural explanation would be that Haemon set out to free Antigone. He is greatly distraught to find her dead and violently angry with his father whom he rightly holds responsible. This is his motivation for trying to kill Creon (1231–4) and for killing himself (1235–9).

5 Calder's arguments are entirely unconvincing. He cites the only other instance of women being killed by hanging (Od. 22.465ff.) which, of course, occurs outside tragedy, and is, besides, a judicial execution rather than a murder. Since hanging is one of the least likely ways that Antigone would have been murdered, and is a much more likely way for a woman to commit suicide in tragedy, the hangings in the Odyssey add little force to his argument. (In the earliest plays of Sophocles alone, two (or three if we include Antigone) of the four female suicides are hangings (Jocasta in the Oedipus and Deianeira in the Trachiniae). Eurydice in the Antigone is the exception. For a complete list and discussion of female deaths in tragedy, see Loraux, Nicole, Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman [Cambridge, MA, 1987], esp. pp. 7–32.)Google Scholar One would suppose that if Sophocles were describing something as unusual as a murder by hanging, he would have been much more explicit about it. As the hypotheses show, it has been taken for granted at least since Alexandrian times that Antigone's death was a suicide. Cf. Sophoclis Fabulae, ed. Pearson, A. C., OCT (Oxford, 1924)Google Scholar. Calder cites Hyginus 72 which abstracts from Euripides' or Astydamas' Antigone a version of the story where Haemon does indeed murder Antigone. Since there is good reason to doubt a Euripidean source (see Paton, James H., HSCP 12 [1901], 269–76)Google Scholar, and Astydamas' version was certainly later than Sophocles', Hyginus is not likely to tell us anything about Sophocles' version. Calder claims that it is an advantage to reconcile the Sophoclean account with that of the drama abstracted in Hyginus (p. 35), but the existence of various incompatible versions of a myth is a common phenomenon and does not pose any pressing need for assimilation. Though a murder, or Creon's assumption of one, would have very neatly explained Creon's reaction in 1228–9, the evidence, unfortunately, points against it.

6 Broadhead, H. D., Tragica (Christchurch, 1968), pp. 77–80.Google Scholar

7 Il. 15.128 μαινμενε, φρνας ἠλ διφθορας; Eur. Helen 1192 διφθαρσαι φρνας.

8 The vocative is sufficient to indicate ạ change of subject; cf., for example, Ajax 66–72, 541–2; Trachiniae 307–10.

9 Corruption of αὐτώ is easier to explain than that of αὐτοὐς. An iota subscript or adscript could have easily found its way into this form causing some later scribe to alter the apparent dative singular to the accusative singular.

10 Jebb takes it as referring to Haemon (p. 217). Calder and Broadhead have suggested the plural (Calder p. 32, Broadhead p. 78).

11 χωρεῖ and καλεἰ (1227) could just as easily be addressed to Antigone as to Haemon; that Creon approaches Antigone's corpse and calls out to it as though it could actually hear him lends dramatic force to the scene and underscores the vehemence of Creon's reaction.