Creon

Eteocles and Polyneices killed one another in single combat outside Thebes. Eteocles was given the honours due to a hero, but Polyneices was declared a traitor because he had attacked his own city. Creon, who took the throne after their deaths, forbade the burial of Polyneices and his Argive allies. Their bodies were to remain on the battlefield, and mourning was forbidden on pain of death by stoning. The decree offended both men and gods, since an unburied corpse could not properly pass into death.

Antigone refused to obey Creon. Her sister Ismene would not help her, so Antigone went alone and performed funeral rites for Polyneices. She covered the body with a thin layer of earth, making a symbolic burial. When Creon learned that his command had been defied, he ordered that the person responsible should be found and brought before him. Antigone was discovered and admitted what she had done. She set the morality of Creon’s decree against the morality of her own actions. Creon, still enraged, assumed that Ismene had shared the offence. Ismene was summoned and falsely confessed because she wished to die with her sister. Creon ordered both women to be imprisoned.

Creon condemned Antigone to be entombed alive in a subterranean vault. Haemon, Creon’s son and Antigone’s betrothed, first tried to remain loyal to his father and to persuade him to change his decision. He then gained entry to the vault and found Antigone dead. She had hanged herself with her veil. Haemon threw himself upon his own sword, invoked the gods’ curse on his father, and died beside her.

News of Haemon’s death reached Creon, followed soon by news of Eurydice’s death. On hearing what had happened to her son, Creon’s wife had killed herself. Creon therefore became widowed and childless. He had reversed his sentence too late, and his attempt to enforce the decree had brought about the deaths of Antigone, Haemon, and Eurydice.