Sophocles’ Antigone and the Self-Isolation of the Tragic Hero

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Notes

¹ Although Antigone, Oedipus the King, and Oedipus at Colonus are often referred to the Theban trilogy, they were not presented together, or in the order of the events they depict. The date of Antigone is uncertain, but falls somewhere within 442 and 439 BCE. Oedipus the King was presented c. 429 BCE. Oedipus at Colonus was composed c. 407 BCE, and produced posthumously in 401 BCE. It is in this play that Oedipus curses his sons, praying to Zeus that they will kill each other in battle.

² See, for example, Euripides’ Bacchae and Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae.

³ The great example from Homer is Achilles’ refusal to fight against the Trojans after Agamemnon has dishonored him. Achilles allowed Patroclus, his closest companion, to wear his armor into battle to frighten the Trojans. Patroclus was indeed mistaken for Achilles, and killed by the Trojan hero Hector.

⁴ Aristotle’s Poetics, 1453a 10, 16.

⁵ Granted, there are many kinds of errors, some intellectual, some inconsequential, some the cause of tragic events. So we do have room to translate hamartia in more than one way. Nevertheless, there is no evidence from other occurrences of the word in ancient texts that it means tragic flaw. In New Testament Greek, which is separated from Aristotle’s Greek by several hundred years, the word had taken on the meaning of sin. That may be at the root of the confusion of error with flaw.

⁶ Exile was the most severe punishment of Sophocles’ time, next only to death. To be exiled, to be removed from the community, was to lose one’s identity. There was even a curse, apolis esto: May he be without a city.

⁷ In an earlier scene, Creon says that both Antigone and Ismene have lost their minds. Ismene agrees, saying that this is the result of having committed a crime.

⁸ It is interesting to note that Antigone uses cloth from her bridal gown to hang herself. Hanging is the traditional method of female suicide. Haemon’s mother Euridyce, however, kills herself as a man would, with a sword.

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Elizabeth Bobrick

Elizabeth Bobrick, Ph.D., is a Visiting Scholar in Classical Studies at Wesleyan University. She received her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, and taught classical languages and literature at the University of Virginia, the University of Missouri, and at Wesleyan University, where she has also taught narrative nonfiction. Her work has appeared in scholarly and literary journals, on topics ranging from gender and parody in Aristophanes to the hidden anxieties of teaching.