Prologue: the sisters before the gates

Day breaks over Thebes after a civil war. The previous night the two sons of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polyneices, met outside the seventh gate and killed each other — one defending the city, the other besieging it. Their uncle Creon, the brothers' nearest male kin, has taken the throne. His first act of governance is an edict: Eteocles will be buried with full honors; Polyneices, who marched against his own city, will be left outside the walls to rot, food for dogs and birds. Anyone who buries him will be stoned to death.

Antigone, the dead brothers' sister, summons her sister Ismene outside the palace gates before dawn. She has already decided. She will bury Polyneices herself, with or without help. Ismene begs her to think. They are women; the men hold the power; their family has already been destroyed by Oedipus's curse and the brothers' double death; one more transgression will finish the line. The gods, Ismene says, will pardon what compulsion forces. Antigone refuses the argument. She does not want pardon. She wants the burial. She tells Ismene to keep silent or speak — she does not care which — and walks off alone toward the body.

The exchange is short and the play's whole shape is in it. Antigone is not arguing on policy; she is acting on a law older than the city. Ismene is not cowardly; she is reasonable, and Sophocles will not punish her for it. The two sisters part as the chorus enters, and the prologue ends without anyone yet knowing whether Antigone will succeed. The audience knows. Everyone in the audience knew the story before the curtain rose. The play is not about what happens. It is about how, and at what cost, and to whom.