Summary

Antigone and Ismene enter from the palace. After Antigone comments on the suffering with which she has lived since the death of her father Oedipus, she tells Ismene that there is new suffering ahead. The bodies of their two brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices each dead by the other’s hand in battle, are to be treated differently. Eteocles, who fought on the home side (i.e., of Thebes) is to be given a hero’s burial, while Polyneices, who fought on the opposing side, is to be treated like a traitor – that is, his body is to be abandoned to the elements and to wild animals. Antigone also reveals that Creon, the Theban governor and uncle to the two young women, has decreed that anyone who tries to give Polyneices a decent burial is to be executed by public stoning.

As Ismene expresses her...