Two brothers leading opposite sides in Thebes’ civil war die fighting each other for the throne. Kreon, the new ruler of Thebes, has decided that one brother, Eteocles, will be honored, buried and sanctified by holy rites, and the other, Polyneices, will lie unburied on the battlefield. In this seminal Greek play by Sophocles, Antigone defies the royal edict sent out by her uncle, Kreon, not to bury the body of her brother, deemed a traitor. Exploring the struggle between the individual and the state, this elegant tragedy about tyrannical power and civil disobedience is considered to be Sophocles’ masterpiece and has become synonymous with political protest.
