Antigone (Pronunciation: /æn'tɪɡəni/ Greek: Αντιγόνη) is the name of two different women in Greek mythology. The name means "unbending", for "anti-" (against) and "gon" ("bend" as in "polygon"). It also means "anti-generation", i.e., "the opposite of her ancestors".
Daughter of Oedipus
Antigone is the daughter of the accidentally incestuous marriage between King Oedipus of Thebes, and his mother Jocasta (thus, Antigone is also her father Oedipus's half-sister and, through her father, her mother Jocasta's granddaughter). She is the subject of a popular story in which she attempts to secure a respectable burial for her brother Polynices, even though he was a traitor to Thebes.
In the oldest version of the story, the funeral of Polynices takes place during Oedipus's reign in Thebes. However, in the best-known versions, Sophocles's tragedies Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone, it occurs in the years after Oedipus's banishment and death, and Antigone has to struggle against Creon. Sophocles's Antigone ends in disaster as Antigone commits suicide, not realizing that Creon has been persuaded to allow Polynices a funeral, and Creon's son Haemon (or Haimon), who loved Antigone, kills himself.
The dramatist Euripides also wrote a play called Antigone, which is lost, but some of the text was preserved by later writers like Ms. Lee, and in passages in his Phoenissae. In Euripides, the calamity is averted by the intercession of Dionysus and is followed by the marriage of Antigone and Haemon.
Different elements of the legend appear in other places. A description of an ancient painting by Philostratus (Imag. ii. 29) refers to Antigone placing the body of Polynices on the funeral pyre, and this is also depicted on a sarcophagus in the Villa Pamfili in Rome. And in Hyginus's version of the legend, founded apparently on a tragedy by some follower of Euripides, Antigone, on being handed over by Creon to her lover Haemon to be slain, is secretly carried off by him and concealed in a shepherd's hut, where she bears him a son, Maeon. When the boy grows up, he attends some funeral games at Thebes, and is recognized by the mark of a dragon on his body. This leads to the discovery that Antigone is still alive. The demi-god Heracles then intercedes, pleading in vain with Creon for Haemon, who slew both Antigone and himself to escape his father's vengeance. This intercession by Heracles is also represented on a painted vase. (Heydermann, Über eine nacheuripideische Antigone, 1868).
The story of Antigone has been a popular subject for books, plays, and other works, including:
- Antigone, one of the three Theban plays by Sophocles (495 BC - 406 BC)
- Antigone, play by Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)
- Antigone, opera by Carl Orff (1895-1982)
- Antigone, play by Jean Anouilh (1910-1987)
- "Antigone-Legend", for soprano and piano (text by Bertolt Brecht), by Frederic Rzewski (b. 1938)
- Antigone, opera by Mikis Theodorakis (b. 1925)
- "The Island", play by Athol Fugard (b. 1932)
- La Pasión Según Antígona Pérez (The Passion of Antigone Pérez), adaptation of Sophocles by Puerto Rican writer Luis Rafael Sánchez (b. 1936), updated to 20th century Latin America
- Tegonni, An African Antigone by Femi Osofisan (b. 1946)
- Antigone, adaptation of Sophocles' play by Peruvian poet José Watanabe (b. 1946)
- Antigone, opera by Mark Alburger (b. 1957)
- Antigone play by Andy Wibbels (b. 1975)
- Antigone, comic book by David Hopkins (b. 1977)
- Antigone by Henry Bauchau
- The Burial At Thebes by Seamus Heaney
- Governing Alice by C. Denby Swanson
- Echo Boom by Caitlin Montayne Parrish
Daughter of Eurytion
A different Antigone was the daughter of Eurytion and wife of Peleus.
Peleus and Telamon, his brother, killed their half-brother Phocus and fled Aegina to escape punishment. In Phthia, Peleus was purified by Eurytion and married Antigone, Eurytion's daughter. Peleus accidentally killed Eurytion during the hunt for the Calydonian Boar and fled Phthia.
Peleus was purifed of the murder of Eurytion in Iolcus by Acastus. Also in Iolcus, Peleus lost a wrestling match in the funeral games of Pelias, Acastus' father, to Atalanta. Astydameia, Acastus' wife, fell in love with Peleus but he scorned her. Bitter, she sent a messenger to Antigone to falsely tell her that Peleus was to marry Acastus' daughter; Antigone hanged herself. (Apollodorus, iii. 13).
Astydameia then told Acastus that Peleus had tried to rape her. Acastus took Peleus on a hunting trip and hid his sword, then abandoned him right before a group of centaurs attacked. Chiron, the wise centaur, returned Peleus' sword and Peleus managed to escape. He pillaged Iolcus and dismembered Astydameia, then marched his army between the pieces.
References
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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