Making America Smarter, 1 Download at a Time
Antigone Overview
Antigone (Pronunciation: /æn'tɪɡəni/ Greek: Αντιγόνη) is the name of two different women in Greek mythology. The name means "anti-generation", i.e., "the opposite of her ancestors".
Antigone is a daughter of the accidentally incestuous marriage between King Oedipus of Thebes, and his mother Jocasta (thus, Antigone is also Oedipus's half-sister and Jocasta's granddaughter). She is the subject of a popular story in which she attempts to secure a respectable burial for her brother Polynices, even though he was a traitor to Thebes.
In the oldest version of the story, the funeral of Polynices takes place during Oedipus's reign in Thebes. However, in the best-known versions, Sophocles's tragedies Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone, it occurs in the years after Oedipus's banishment and death, and Antigone has to struggle against the tyrant Creon. Sophocles's Antigone ends in disaster as Antigone commits suicide, not realizing that Creon has been persuaded to allow Polynices a funeral, and Creon's son Haemon, who loved Antigone, kills himself.
The dramatist Euripides also wrote a play called Antigone, which is lost, but were incidentally preserved by later writers and in passages in his Phoenissae. In Euripides, the calamity is averted by the intercession of Dionysus and is followed by the marriage of Antigone and Haemon.
Different elements of the legend appear in other places. A description of an ancient painting by Philostratus (Imag. ii. 29) refers to Antigone placing the body of Polynices on the funeral pyre, and this is also depicted on on a sarcophagus in the Villa Pamfili in Rome. And 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, is secretly carried off by him and concealed in a shepherd's hut, where she bears him a son, Maeon. When the boy grows up, he attends some funeral games at Thebes, and is recognized by the mark of a dragon on his body. This leads to the discovery that Antigone is still alive. The demi-god Heracles then intercedes, pleading in vain with Creon for Haemon, who slew both Antigone and himself to escape his father's vengeance. This intercession by Heracles is also represented on a painted vase. (Heydermann, Über eine nacheuripideische Antigone, 1868).
Antigone is a daughter of the accidentally incestuous marriage between King Oedipus of Thebes, and his mother Jocasta (thus, Antigone is also Oedipus's half-sister and Jocasta's granddaughter). She is the subject of a popular story in which she attempts to secure a respectable burial for her brother Polynices, even though he was a traitor to Thebes.
In the oldest version of the story, the funeral of Polynices takes place during Oedipus's reign in Thebes. However, in the best-known versions, Sophocles's tragedies Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone, it occurs in the years after Oedipus's banishment and death, and Antigone has to struggle against the tyrant Creon. Sophocles's Antigone ends in disaster as Antigone commits suicide, not realizing that Creon has been persuaded to allow Polynices a funeral, and Creon's son Haemon, who loved Antigone, kills himself.
The dramatist Euripides also wrote a play called Antigone, which is lost, but were incidentally preserved by later writers and in passages in his Phoenissae. In Euripides, the calamity is averted by the intercession of Dionysus and is followed by the marriage of Antigone and Haemon.
Different elements of the legend appear in other places. A description of an ancient painting by Philostratus (Imag. ii. 29) refers to Antigone placing the body of Polynices on the funeral pyre, and this is also depicted on on a sarcophagus in the Villa Pamfili in Rome. And 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, is secretly carried off by him and concealed in a shepherd's hut, where she bears him a son, Maeon. When the boy grows up, he attends some funeral games at Thebes, and is recognized by the mark of a dragon on his body. This leads to the discovery that Antigone is still alive. The demi-god Heracles then intercedes, pleading in vain with Creon for Haemon, who slew both Antigone and himself to escape his father's vengeance. This intercession by Heracles is also represented on a painted vase. (Heydermann, Über eine nacheuripideische Antigone, 1868).
About
© 2009 Created by RichardDTucci on Ning. Create a Ning Network!
