Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/365

343 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 343 be in accordance with the object of this work to take a nearer view of the particular situations which form the turning points of the different plays, and of the ethical ideas which are asserted in them. The Antigone turns entirely on the contest between the interests and requirements of the slate and the rights and duties of the family. Thebes has successfully repulsed the attack of the Argive army ; but Poly- neices, one of her citizens, and a member of the Theban royal family, lies dead before the walls among the enemies who had threatened Thebes with fire and sword. Creon, the king of Thebes, only follows a custom of the Greeks, the object of which was to preserve a state from the attacks of its own citizens, when he leaves the enemy of his native land unburied as a prey to dogs and vultures; yet the manner in which he keeps up this political principle, the excessive severity of the punishment denounced against those who wished to bury the corpse, the terrible threats addressed to those who watched it, and, still more, the boastful and violent strain in which he sets forth and extols his own principles — all this gives us a proof of that infatuation of a narrow mind, unenlightened by gentler.ess of a higher nature, which appeared to the Greeks to contain in itself a foreboding of approaching misfortune. But what was to be done by the relations of the dead man, the females or his family, on whom the care of the corpse was imposed as a religious duty by the universal law of the Greeks ? That they should feel their duty to the family in all its force, and not comprehend what they owed to the state, is in accordance with the natural character of women ; but while the one sister, Ismene, only sees the impossibility of performing the former duty, the great soul of Antigone fires with the occasion, and forms resolves of the greatest boldness. Defiance begets defiance : Creon's harsh decree calls forth in her breast the most obstinate, in- flexible self-will, which disregards all consequences, and despises all gentler means. In this consists her guilt, which Sophocles does not conceal ; on the contrary, he brings it prominently before us, and es- pecially in the choruses;* but the very reason why Antigone is so highly tragical a character is this, that, notwithstanding the crime she has committed, she appears to us so great and so amiable. The sen- tinel's description of her, how she came to the corpse in the burning heat of the sun, while a scorching whirlwind (rvf^) was throwing all nature into confusion, and how she raised a shrill cry of woe when she saw that the earth she had scattered over it had been taken away, is a picture of a being, who, possessed by an ethical idea as by an irresistible law of nature, blindly follows her own noble impulses. It must, however, be insisted on that it is not the tragical end of this great and noble creature, but the disclosure of Creon's infatuation, which forms the general object of the tragedj ; and that, although
 * See particularly v. S.">J. Dindorf: -x^us W irx**»* fyurovs-