When was antigone set

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View the Study Pack. View the Lesson Plans. Order our Antigone Study Guide. By the s, democratic ideology had taken deep root in Athens, and with it came certain values: citizens were encouraged to be loyal to the polis and its laws,and to place this loyalty above their private family interests.

Citizens should furthermore enjoy the freedom to vote and speak as they wished, and public officials could be held accountable for their actions. Some tensions still persisted in society, and there was always the danger of a counter-coup by aristocratic figures who might re-establish tyrannical rule. Punishments for traitors to the democratic order were harsh; it was not permitted to bury their body within the boundaries of the polis. The wealth and prestige of Athens had also drawn a diverse group of thinkers to the city.

The sophists spread ideas of relativism and challenged traditional ideologies. Though a part of the population was still very traditional, more and more people started to raise questions about religious practices, the cosmos and nature, morality and the laws of civilization. Since it might have been disturbing to stage such tensions in an Athenian setting, tragedy tended to locate its stories in Thebes, an ancient enemy of Athens, which served as a safe space to explore cultural and ideological fault lines.

The Antigone does not offer any final answer to what is right and what is wrong, encouraging the audience to continue this debate once the play is over. This is especially the case for Antigone. They act as the voices of normality, but they can also be rather obtuse. For example in Antigone the clash between Creon and Antigone can be seen as symbolic of the many cultural clashes going on in Athens at the time.

Probably the most prominent Athenian culture clash we see in Antigone is the laws of the state vs. Sophocles was a religious conservative and was a member of several cults. However, in his time, a group called the Sophists was on the rise. These men valued rationality over what they thought of as superstition.

Any Athenian even moderately aware of current events wouldn't have missed the warning encoded in Sophocles' play. When Creon, the hyper-rational representative of law and order falls to the will of the gods, it's pretty clear where Sophocles stood on this hot-button issue. Athenians also liked objective distance in terms of time.

Tragedies were almost always set in Greece's distant past. Sophocles and his buddies adapted their stories from the Greeks' rich oral tradition.