What was Antigone about?
The day before the play takes place, Antigone’s two brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, killed each other in a battle over the kingship of their country, Thebes. Their uncle, Creon, has ruled that Eteocles, who was defending the city from inside, should have a hero’s funeral, but Polyneices, who was attacking from outside (to force Eteocles to give him his share of their inheritance), should be left unburied. Since the ancient Greeks believed that a soul could not enter the Underworld util the body it had left was buried, leaving a body unburied was more than just a matter of sanitation. Antigone fulfills her duty to her brother by burying him, gets caught, and is walled up alive in a tomb. Various people plead with Creon to change his mind, but he refuses to listen to anyone until the prophet Teiresias tells him that he has angered the gods. After Teiresias leaves, Creon turns to the chorus (his subjects) for advice, and when they urge him to let Antigone out and bury Polyneices, he do
