Milli mála - 01.01.2011, Side 81

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Elements of the Antigone story, however, may go back much
further in time than Homer’s epic.
Antigone’s lonely journey to the cave and Hades follows an ancient heroic
pattern, the dangerous quest into the unknown, which pervades ancient
literature from the Gilgamesh Epic through the Odyssey, Aeneid, and
beyond. Her heroic journey, however, also has a distinctly feminine
character. She defies the city in the name of the house, and she takes on
the role of Kore the Maiden, carried off to marry Death in the Underworld
[…].11
The difference is, of course, that Antigone does not (as does Perse-
phone to whom she compares herself in Sophocles’ play) return to
earth. Yet Charles Segal and other classical scholars who have
sought to illuminate the Greek plays against their mythic
backgrounds know they are only looking at traces. As Segal points
out, in Antigone’s case, the meanings are often wound around
reversals and to contradictions to their sources. Thus Sophocles can
have Antigone compare herself to Niobe, the classical symbolic
figure of mourn ing, who lost seven sons and seven daughters, and
yet remain a symbol of virginity (Segal, 168). Indeed, her name,
rather than comprising anti (against) and gony (bend, angle, etc.)
may ultimately be derived from words than mean anti-generative
(gonai meaning ‘birth seed’).
At the same time as the tragic plays inherit certain elements from
the epic cycle, they are also grounded in contemporaneous politics.
The opposition between oikos and polis was a serious issue in the
emergent fifth century Athenian democracy, where traditional tribal
and family rites (and roles) were slowly being taken over by the state.
Creon acts ‘wrongly’ in attempting to make the burial of Polyneices
a political issue when it is in fact a personal one, a fact that the
Athenian audience would have understood very well.
Why Sophocles should have created a female figure to plead a
brother’s cause is more difficult to explain, except that Greek trag-
edy appears to be replete with strong female characters, even if
11 Charles Segal, ‘Antigone: Death and Love, Hades and Dionysus’, Oxford Reading in Greek Tragedy,
ed. Erich Segal, Oxford: OUP, 1983, pp. 167–176.
MARTIN S. REGAL