Antigone (Euripides)

Antigone
Artistic depiction of Antigone by Emil Teschendorff, by 1883
Written by	Euripides
Characters	Antigone Haemon Creon Others
Date premiered	Estimated between 420 and 406 BCE
Place premiered	Athens
Original language	Ancient Greek
Genre	Tragedy
Setting	Thebes

Antigone (/ænˈtɪɡəniː/ an-TI-gə-nee; Ἀντιγόνη) is a play by the Attic dramatist Euripides, which is now lost except for a number of fragments. According to Aristophanes of Byzantium, the plot was similar to that of Sophocles' play Antigone, with three differences. The date of the play is uncertain, but there is evidence that it was written late in Euripides' career, between 420 BCE and 406 BCE.

Sophocles' Antigone (ca. 441 BCE) told the story of how Oedipus' daughter Antigone buried the body of her brother Polynices who had led an invasion of Thebes, defying the order of her uncle Creon who was ruling Thebes. As a result, Creon condemned her to death, and although Creon rescinded the death sentence, Antigone and her lover Haemon, Creon's son, killed themselves.

The extant fragments of Euripides' Antigone do not reveal much of the plot, but Aristophanes of Byzantium has written that Euripides' play differed from Sophocles' in three major ways:

Modern scholars interpret Aristophanes comment to indicate that Euripides' play developed along similar lines to Sophocles', except that Haemon's participation in, or at least knowledge of, Antigone's burial of Polynices led to the happy resolution of their marriage in Euripides' play instead of their deaths in Sophocles' play. One extant fragment is a plea to the god Dionysus, suggesting the possibility that Dionysus was the deus ex machina who saved Antigone and Haemon and prophesied the birth of Maeon. Several extant fragments deal with love and marriage, and John Homer Huddilston believed that this, and hint from other fragments (although some of these are now believed to be from plays other than Antigone) indicate that Antigone and Haemon were married secretly.