# The Complete Plays of Sophocles - Antigone  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Sophocles]] - Full Title:: The Complete Plays of Sophocles - Antigone - Category: #books ## Highlights > For the most part, democracy was not called dêmokratia, which could mean anything from “people power” to “mob rule.” To forestall negative interpretations, the defenders of democracy preferred to call it isonomia, “equality before or under the law.” ([Location 521](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=521)) > When a god spellbinds a warrior, even losers may elude him. ([Location 1033](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=1033)) > I know, now, to hate my enemy as one who may later be a friend. My friend I’ll help out just enough— he may, one day, be my enemy. Most men never find a secure mooring in friendship. ([Location 1256](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=1256)) > TEKMESSA Then let them laugh! Joy in his sorrows.              1130 They didn’t miss him alive? Maybe they will when in the thick of it they find he’s gone! Men with no sense don’t know what good they have . . . till they’ve thrown it away. ([Location 1522](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=1522)) > Look how fate bound these two together! With the war belt Aias gave him, Hektor was gripped against the chariot rails and dragged, mangled, till his life gave out. In turn, Aias got this gift from Hektor and fell on it.              1210 ([Location 1591](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=1591)) > CHORUS (severally) When, when will these wandering years add up to something, anything to put an end to this spear-driving backbreaking work on the plains of Troy whelmed in the shame and sorrow of the Greeks. He should have been sucked up into the sky                  or plunged into the black hole                 1370 of ever open Hades— the man who taught Greeks to combine forces with hateful arms for making war, exhaustion reviving exhaustion to kill men. The thrill of myrtle garland brimming shallows of wine bowls sweet crescendos of flutes          all that that man has taken from me,           1380 taken my sleep and love making love into the night. I’m left out here, who cares? my hair sopping wet, sodden with night dew, never to let me forget I’m here, in miserable rotten Troy. Was a time massive Aias held off nightmares, and waves of arrows. Now he is given up          to the brute demon that pursued him.           1390 Ahead what joy can I see? O to be blown homeward to the wooded headland towering up over the beating sea. To sail! under the high tableland of Sounion hailing all praise to blessed Athens. ([Location 1741](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=1741)) > Antigone thrived throughout the twentieth century as the perfect ancient play to dramatize rebellion against tyrants. ([Location 10443](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=10443)) > A look into Kreon’s soul to locate his core beliefs—opening him up like a wax writing tablet in its case, to paraphrase Kreon’s son Haimon—would reveal his moral emptiness. ([Location 10454](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=10454)) > As Kreon puts his crowd-pleasing but insincere inaugural speech behind him, he acts on intense and ugly prejudices, not principles. ([Location 10455](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=10455)) > When, after performing the forbidden rituals, Antigone is caught, she admits and then fiercely defends her crime, citing immutable laws of philia that require a family to bury and honor its dead. ([Location 10495](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=10495)) > You have thrown children from the sunlight down to the shades of Hades, ruthlessly housing a living person in a tomb, while you detain here, among us, something that belongs to the gods who live below our world—the naked unwept corpse you’ve robbed of the solemn grieving we owe our dead. ([Location 10540](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=10540)) - Note: Tiresias > ANTIGONE He’s got no right to keep me from what’s mine! ([Location 10633](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=10633)) > Go ahead, please yourself—defy laws the gods expect us to honor. ([Location 10662](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=10662)) > You cannot measure a man’s character, policies, or his common sense—until you see him at work enforcing old laws and making new ones. To me, there’s nothing worse than a man, while he’s running a city, who fails to act on sound advice—but fears something so much his mouth clamps shut. ([Location 10754](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=10754)) > Nor have I any use for a man whose friend means more to him than his country. Believe me, Zeus, for you miss nothing, I’ll always speak out when I see Thebes choose destruction rather than deliverance. ([Location 10759](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=10759)) > Mankind’s most deadly invention is money. ([Location 10858](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=10858)) > I deny that your edicts—since you, a mere man,    490 imposed them—have the force to trample on the gods’ unwritten and infallible laws. ([Location 11000](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11000)) > There is no doubt that if she emerges victorious, and is never punished, I am no man. She will be the man here. ([Location 11025](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11025)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Tyranny is fortunate in many ways: it can, for instance, say and do anything it wants. ([Location 11047](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11047)) > Citizens must obey men in office appointed by the city, both in minor matters              740 and in the great questions of what is just— even when they think an action unjust. ([Location 11226](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11226)) > And to make sure we enforce discipline— never let a woman overwhelm a king. Better to be driven from power, if it comes to that, by a man. Then nobody can say you were beaten by some female. ([Location 11235](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11235)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > But I hear, unobserved, what people think. Listen. Thebes aches for this girl. No person ever, they’re saying, less deserved to die— no one’s ever been so unjustly killed                      770 for actions as magnificent as hers. When her own brother died in that bloodbath she kept him from lying out there unburied, fair game for flesh-eating dogs and vultures. Hasn’t she earned, they ask, golden honor? ([Location 11248](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11248)) > Attitudes are like clothes; you can change them. Don’t think that what you say is always right. Whoever thinks that he alone is wise, that he’s got a superior tongue and brain, open him up and you’ll find him a blank. ([Location 11261](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11261)) > It’s never shameful for even a wise man to keep on learning new things all his life. ([Location 11264](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11264)) > Be flexible, not rigid. Think of trees caught in a raging winter torrent: Those that bend will survive with all their limbs intact. ([Location 11266](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11266)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > What I attack is your abuse of power. ([Location 11305](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11305)) > because I washed your dead bodies, dressed you with my hands, and poured blessèd offerings of drink on your graves. Now, because I honored your corpse, Polyneikes, this is how I’m repaid! ([Location 11457](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11457)) > Tell me, gods, which of your laws did I break? ([Location 11474](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11474)) > Kreon, your mind has sickened Thebes. Our city’s altars, and our city’s braziers, have been defiled, all of them, by dogs and birds, with flesh torn from the wretched corpse of Oedipus’ fallen son. Because of this, the gods will not accept our prayers or the offerings of burnt meat that come from our hands. No bird now sings a clear omen—their keen cries have been garbled by the taste of a slain man’s thickened blood. ([Location 11562](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11562)) > Respect the dead. Don’t spear the fallen. How much courage does it take to kill a dead man? ([Location 11573](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11573)) > You have thrown children from the sunlight down to the shades of Hades, ruthlessly housing a living person in a tomb, while you detain here, among us, something that belongs to the gods who live below our world—the naked unwept corpse you’ve robbed of the solemn grieving we owe our dead. None of this should have been any concern of yours—or of the Olympian gods— but you have involved them in your outrage! ([Location 11619](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11619)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > I’m well aware of that. It unnerves me. Surrender would be devastating, but if I stand firm, I could be destroyed. ([Location 11645](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11645)) > My heart is telling me we must obey established law until the day we die. ([Location 11668](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11668)) > Amass wealth if you can, show off your house. Display the panache of a great monarch. But if joy disappears from your life,              1300 I wouldn’t give the shadow cast by smoke for all you possess. Only happiness matters. ([Location 11713](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11713)) > Deadly, bullheaded blunders. ([Location 11804](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11804)) > Then with her last breath she cursed you, Kreon, killer of your own son. ([Location 11851](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11851)) > I’m a wretched coward, awash with terror. ([Location 11857](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11857)) > Good sense is crucial to human happiness. Never fail to respect the gods, for the huge claims of proud men are always hugely punished— by blows that, as the proud grow old, pound wisdom through their minds. ([Location 11899](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11899)) # The Complete Plays of Sophocles - Antigone  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Sophocles]] - Full Title:: The Complete Plays of Sophocles - Antigone - Category: #books ## Highlights > For the most part, democracy was not called dêmokratia, which could mean anything from “people power” to “mob rule.” To forestall negative interpretations, the defenders of democracy preferred to call it isonomia, “equality before or under the law.” ([Location 521](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=521)) > When a god spellbinds a warrior, even losers may elude him. ([Location 1033](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=1033)) > I know, now, to hate my enemy as one who may later be a friend. My friend I’ll help out just enough— he may, one day, be my enemy. Most men never find a secure mooring in friendship. ([Location 1256](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=1256)) > TEKMESSA Then let them laugh! Joy in his sorrows.              1130 They didn’t miss him alive? Maybe they will when in the thick of it they find he’s gone! Men with no sense don’t know what good they have . . . till they’ve thrown it away. ([Location 1522](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=1522)) > Look how fate bound these two together! With the war belt Aias gave him, Hektor was gripped against the chariot rails and dragged, mangled, till his life gave out. In turn, Aias got this gift from Hektor and fell on it.              1210 ([Location 1591](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=1591)) > CHORUS (severally) When, when will these wandering years add up to something, anything to put an end to this spear-driving backbreaking work on the plains of Troy whelmed in the shame and sorrow of the Greeks. He should have been sucked up into the sky                  or plunged into the black hole                 1370 of ever open Hades— the man who taught Greeks to combine forces with hateful arms for making war, exhaustion reviving exhaustion to kill men. The thrill of myrtle garland brimming shallows of wine bowls sweet crescendos of flutes          all that that man has taken from me,           1380 taken my sleep and love making love into the night. I’m left out here, who cares? my hair sopping wet, sodden with night dew, never to let me forget I’m here, in miserable rotten Troy. Was a time massive Aias held off nightmares, and waves of arrows. Now he is given up          to the brute demon that pursued him.           1390 Ahead what joy can I see? O to be blown homeward to the wooded headland towering up over the beating sea. To sail! under the high tableland of Sounion hailing all praise to blessed Athens. ([Location 1741](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=1741)) > Antigone thrived throughout the twentieth century as the perfect ancient play to dramatize rebellion against tyrants. ([Location 10443](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=10443)) > A look into Kreon’s soul to locate his core beliefs—opening him up like a wax writing tablet in its case, to paraphrase Kreon’s son Haimon—would reveal his moral emptiness. ([Location 10454](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=10454)) > As Kreon puts his crowd-pleasing but insincere inaugural speech behind him, he acts on intense and ugly prejudices, not principles. ([Location 10455](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=10455)) > When, after performing the forbidden rituals, Antigone is caught, she admits and then fiercely defends her crime, citing immutable laws of philia that require a family to bury and honor its dead. ([Location 10495](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=10495)) > You have thrown children from the sunlight down to the shades of Hades, ruthlessly housing a living person in a tomb, while you detain here, among us, something that belongs to the gods who live below our world—the naked unwept corpse you’ve robbed of the solemn grieving we owe our dead. ([Location 10540](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=10540)) - Note: Tiresias > ANTIGONE He’s got no right to keep me from what’s mine! ([Location 10633](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=10633)) > Go ahead, please yourself—defy laws the gods expect us to honor. ([Location 10662](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=10662)) > You cannot measure a man’s character, policies, or his common sense—until you see him at work enforcing old laws and making new ones. To me, there’s nothing worse than a man, while he’s running a city, who fails to act on sound advice—but fears something so much his mouth clamps shut. ([Location 10754](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=10754)) > Nor have I any use for a man whose friend means more to him than his country. Believe me, Zeus, for you miss nothing, I’ll always speak out when I see Thebes choose destruction rather than deliverance. ([Location 10759](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=10759)) > Mankind’s most deadly invention is money. ([Location 10858](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=10858)) > I deny that your edicts—since you, a mere man,    490 imposed them—have the force to trample on the gods’ unwritten and infallible laws. ([Location 11000](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11000)) > There is no doubt that if she emerges victorious, and is never punished, I am no man. She will be the man here. ([Location 11025](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11025)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Tyranny is fortunate in many ways: it can, for instance, say and do anything it wants. ([Location 11047](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11047)) > Citizens must obey men in office appointed by the city, both in minor matters              740 and in the great questions of what is just— even when they think an action unjust. ([Location 11226](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11226)) > And to make sure we enforce discipline— never let a woman overwhelm a king. Better to be driven from power, if it comes to that, by a man. Then nobody can say you were beaten by some female. ([Location 11235](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11235)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > But I hear, unobserved, what people think. Listen. Thebes aches for this girl. No person ever, they’re saying, less deserved to die— no one’s ever been so unjustly killed                      770 for actions as magnificent as hers. When her own brother died in that bloodbath she kept him from lying out there unburied, fair game for flesh-eating dogs and vultures. Hasn’t she earned, they ask, golden honor? ([Location 11248](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11248)) > Attitudes are like clothes; you can change them. Don’t think that what you say is always right. Whoever thinks that he alone is wise, that he’s got a superior tongue and brain, open him up and you’ll find him a blank. ([Location 11261](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11261)) > It’s never shameful for even a wise man to keep on learning new things all his life. ([Location 11264](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11264)) > Be flexible, not rigid. Think of trees caught in a raging winter torrent: Those that bend will survive with all their limbs intact. ([Location 11266](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11266)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > What I attack is your abuse of power. ([Location 11305](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11305)) > because I washed your dead bodies, dressed you with my hands, and poured blessèd offerings of drink on your graves. Now, because I honored your corpse, Polyneikes, this is how I’m repaid! ([Location 11457](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11457)) > Tell me, gods, which of your laws did I break? ([Location 11474](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11474)) > Kreon, your mind has sickened Thebes. Our city’s altars, and our city’s braziers, have been defiled, all of them, by dogs and birds, with flesh torn from the wretched corpse of Oedipus’ fallen son. Because of this, the gods will not accept our prayers or the offerings of burnt meat that come from our hands. No bird now sings a clear omen—their keen cries have been garbled by the taste of a slain man’s thickened blood. ([Location 11562](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11562)) > Respect the dead. Don’t spear the fallen. How much courage does it take to kill a dead man? ([Location 11573](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11573)) > You have thrown children from the sunlight down to the shades of Hades, ruthlessly housing a living person in a tomb, while you detain here, among us, something that belongs to the gods who live below our world—the naked unwept corpse you’ve robbed of the solemn grieving we owe our dead. None of this should have been any concern of yours—or of the Olympian gods— but you have involved them in your outrage! ([Location 11619](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11619)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > I’m well aware of that. It unnerves me. Surrender would be devastating, but if I stand firm, I could be destroyed. ([Location 11645](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11645)) > My heart is telling me we must obey established law until the day we die. ([Location 11668](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11668)) > Amass wealth if you can, show off your house. Display the panache of a great monarch. But if joy disappears from your life,              1300 I wouldn’t give the shadow cast by smoke for all you possess. Only happiness matters. ([Location 11713](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11713)) > Deadly, bullheaded blunders. ([Location 11804](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11804)) > Then with her last breath she cursed you, Kreon, killer of your own son. ([Location 11851](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11851)) > I’m a wretched coward, awash with terror. ([Location 11857](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11857)) > Good sense is crucial to human happiness. Never fail to respect the gods, for the huge claims of proud men are always hugely punished— by blows that, as the proud grow old, pound wisdom through their minds. ([Location 11899](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B004MMEIFU&location=11899))