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Antigone
9Sophocles
Sophocles's drama of a woman who defies the king to bury her brother — the founding Western statement of conscience against the state, debated every century since.
GBM Assessment (Score: 9/10)
Sophocles' Antigone dramatizes the timeless conflict between individual conscience and the authority of the state, presenting what Hegel considered the supreme tragedy in Western literature. Antigone's defiance of King Creon's edict in order to bury her brother laid the philosophical foundation for all subsequent discourse on civil disobedience.
Crafted at the height of Athenian democracy, Antigone became the subject of Hegel's celebrated analysis of tragic conflict between equally valid moral claims. Jean Anouilh's 1944 adaptation during the German occupation of France transformed the play into a powerful symbol of the French Resistance.
Classical Athens: The Golden Age, c. 480-430 BC
Athens defeats Persia at Marathon and Salamis, inaugurating the most concentrated cultural flowering in Western history. Under Pericles, the Parthenon rises. Athenian democracy reaches fullest expression. The Great Dionysia produces tragedy and comedy. Herodotus invents history. The population of Athens — smaller than modern Reno — shapes Western civilization forever.
Awards & Adaptations
Hegel's analysis. Anouilh (1944). Core at Princeton/Oxford/St. John's.
Recommended Edition
R.C. Jebb (1888)
