The ode is very specific, that it's the man who stops paying due attention to divine matters and the law of the gods who will falld bring down all the great achievements of civilization. Another emphasis in the ode is that even though mankind, humankind, has been able to master all these different areas, the one thing that a humans cannot master is death. Is hades. So that as the ultimate er obstacle to the progress, the achievements of mankind. And that is going to be demonstrated emphatically by the end of the play, when creon is facing the death of all these members of his family. We'r coming towards the end.
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