Can you tell I'm getting confused? Here is my list of questions to see if anyone else out there may have the answer.
Who does the Chorus Leader side with, Eteocles or Polyneices? That came up in a study guide I have here so I looked to the play. I can't figure it out. Eteocles was the king at the moment, Polyneices "swooped in like an screaming eagle"? So I would assume they were on Etecoles' side. But it seems to me they think Creon is being a creep. Hmm. Why would the study guide ask such a question?
A quote from The Ancient World: Justice, Heroism, and Responsibility: "these itinerant teachers called Sophists...were all the rage with the brilliant youth, but suspect to the older generation. Their contrast of the 'conventional' and 'natural' morality, justice, and theology appeared corrosive of established values." So was Creon the one with the old established values, or young Antigone?
By the way, love the play! I have to read it out loud to irritate everyone around me though! :))
"Who does the Chorus Leader side with, Eteocles or Polyneices? That came up in a study guide I have here so I looked to the play. I can't figure it out. Eteocles was the king at the moment, Polyneices "swooped in like an screaming eagle"? So I would assume they were on Etecoles' side. But it seems to me they think Creon is being a creep. Hmm. Why would the study guide ask such a question?"
Just from what I've read so far, it looks as if Sophocles is a subtle enough writer that he can have at least one character have mixed feelings about something. It seems to me that, though the Chorus leader rejoices that Polynices has been defeated, he feels that the sentence handed down is too harsh. Just from the text, it seems to me that there is a hint that Creon is overstepping his bounds in terms of attempting to be ruler of the dead as well as the living:
"The power is yours, I suppose, to enforce it with the laws, both for the dead and all of us, the living."
The dead are ruled over by a god who is as possessive of his own domain and rights as any other god would be. Remember what Odysseus, and the Phaeacians, suffered when Poseidon felt that they had offended his rights as a ruler of the sea! And Odysseus at least had one or two other gods on his side -- still he barely got out alive. The Phaeacians, throwing themselves on Poseidon's mercy, suffered an unspeakable punishment for honoring the rights of another god -- and that god himself agreed that Poseidon was within his rights to strike back at them.
Anyway: The Chorus leader acknowledges Creon's earthly authority, and is glad that the "right" side won the war; but may now fear that Creon's decree may be beyond his lawful authority. Deciding the fate of living traitors is the right of a mortal king; the fate of a dead one (remember, Polynices' spirit is affected by what kind of burial, if any, he receives) should be left to the ruler of the dead. (Again, this is just my reading.)
The Fagles' introduction mentions says this:
"Denial of burial in their homeland to traitors, real or supposed, was not unknown in Greece. Themistocles, for example, the hero of the Persian War, was later driven from Athens by his political enemies, who accused him of pro-Persian conspiratorial activity. Hounded from one Greek city to another he finally took refuge in Persian-controlled territory, where he died. When his relatives wished to bring his bones back to be buried in Athenian soil, permission was refused. Creon's decree of course goes much further and forbidds burial altogether, but the Athenian attitude toward Themistocles shows that for Sophocles' audience the decree did not sound as outlandishly barbaric as it does to us."
I don't know about that. That might not be a logical step. It might be, rather, that the Athenians watching this play might think that it was one thing to refuse a certain sort of burial and honors to a political outcast, but stepping into barbarity to refuse burial altogether.
