[image]
There were two women named Antigone ("like her ancestors") in Greek mythology.
After the first year, Eteocles refused to step down and an angered Polynices attacked Thebes with his supporters (the Seven Against Thebes). Both brothers died in the battle, "each slain by the other's hand". King Creon, who ascended to the throne of Thebes, decreed that Polynices "who came back from exile, and sought to consume utterly with fire the city of his fathers," was not to be buried: "touching this man, it hath been proclaimed to our people that none shall grace him with sepulture or lament, but leave him unburied, a corpse for birds and dogs to eat, a ghastly sight of shame."
Antigone, sister of Polynices, defied the order, explaining, "I owe a longer allegiance to the dead than to the living: in that world I shall abide for ever", but was caught. Creon decreed that she was to be locked in a cave to die (this in spite of her betrothal to King Creon's son Haemon). Antigone's sister, Ismene, then declared she had aided Antigone and wanted the same fate, although she was innocent.
The gods, through the blind prophet Tiresias, expressed their disapproval of Antigone's fate, causing Creon to rescind his order. Creon then went to bury Polynices himself. However, Antigone had already hanged herself rather than be buried alive. When Creon arrived at the tomb where she was to be interred, his son Haemon unsuccessfully attempted to murder him and then killed himself. When Creon's wife, Eurydice, was informed of Haemon's death, she, too, took her own life.
Antigone's character and these incidents of her life presented an attractive subject to the Greek tragic poets, especially Sophocles in the Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus, and Euripides, whose Antigone, though now lost, is partly known from extracts incidentally preserved in later writers, and from passages in his Phoenissae.
In the order of the events, at least, Sophocles departed from the original legend, according to which the burial of Polyneices took place while Oedipus was yet in Thebes, not after he had died at Colonus. Again, in regard to Antigone's tragic end Sophocles differs from Euripides, according to whom the calamity was averted by the intercession of Dionysus and was followed by the marriage of Antigone and Haemon.
In Hyginus's version of the legend, founded apparently on a tragedy by some follower of Euripides, Antigone, on being handed over by Creon to her lover Haemon to be slain, was secretly carried off by him, and concealed in a shepherd's hut, where she bore him a son Maeon. When the boy grew up, he went to some funeral games at Thebes, and was recognized by the mark of a dragon on his body. This led to the discovery that Antigone was still alive. Heracles pleaded in vain with Creon for Haemon, who slew both Antigone and himself, to escape his father's vengeance.
On a painted vase the scene of the intercession of Heracles is represented (Heydermann, Über eine nacheuripideische Antigone, 1868). Antigone placing the body of Polyneices on the funeral pile occurs on a sarcophagus in the villa Pamfili in Rome, and is mentioned in the description of an ancient painting by Philostratus (Imag. ii. 29), who states that the flames consuming the two brothers burnt apart, indicating their unalterable hatred, even in death.
The story of Antigone has been a popular subject for books, plays and other works, including:
Peleus and Telamon, his brother, killed their half-brother Phocus and fled Aegina to escape punishment. In Phthia, Peleus was purified by Eurytion and married Antigone, Eurytion's daughter. Peleus accidentally killed Eurytion during the hunt for the Calydonian Boar and fled Phthia.
Peleus was purifed of the murder of Eurytion in Iolcus by Acastus. Also in Iolcus, Peleus lost a wrestling match in the funeral games of Pelias, Acastus' father, to Atalanta. Astydameia, Acastus' wife, fell in love with Peleus but he scorned her. Bitter, she sent a messenger to Antigone to falsely tell her that Peleus was to marry Acastus' daughter; Antigone hanged herself. (Apollodorus, iii. 13).
Astydameia then told Acastus that Peleus had tried to rape her. Acastus took Peleus on a hunting trip and hid his sword, then abandoned him right before a group of centaurs attacked. Chiron, the wise centaur, returned Peleus' sword and Peleus managed to escape. He pillaged Iolcus and dismembered Astydameia, then marched his army between the pieces.