Edith hall: I don't think she made a mistake, because i think the play entirely vindicates her. The apparent lack of any kind of written constitution, or even functioning constitution, in thebes is very strange. He invites the chorus and says, you're just old friends of the family. Can rely on you to stand by me. It's not a formal senate. It's Not a formal parliament, it's not a formally assembly. Its obeying the most ancient, common to all the greeks, imperatives of piety and social order. It is exactly the opposite of anarchy. Now, in fact, burying your own dead is the exact opposite of Anarchy.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what is reputedly the most performed of all Greek tragedies. Antigone, by Sophocles (c496-c406 BC), is powerfully ambiguous, inviting the audience to reassess its values constantly before the climax of the play resolves the plot if not the issues. Antigone is barely a teenager and is prepared to defy her uncle Creon, the new king of Thebes, who has decreed that nobody should bury the body of her brother, a traitor, on pain of death. This sets up a conflict between generations, between the state and the individual, uncle and niece, autocracy and pluralism, and it releases an enormous tragic energy that brings sudden death to Antigone, her fiance Haemon who is also Creon's son, and to Creon's wife Eurydice, while Creon himself is condemned to a living death of grief.
With
Edith Hall
Professor of Classics at Durham University
Oliver Taplin
Emeritus Professor of Classics, University of Oxford
And
Lyndsay Coo
Senior Lecturer in Ancient Greek Language and Literature at the University of Bristol
Producer: Simon Tillotson