Second Episode: Antigone before Creon

The guard returns with Antigone bound between him and his colleagues. He recounts the catch. After Creon's earlier threats they had brushed every speck of dust from the corpse and sat upwind of the stench, watching. Toward midday a whirlwind raised a cloud of dust that blotted out the sky. When it cleared, the girl was standing over the body, wailing like a mother bird at a robbed nest, pouring libations from a bronze urn. They swooped down and seized her. She denied nothing.

Creon questions her. Did you know about the proclamation? She knew. Everyone knew. And yet you broke it? Yes — because these laws were not ordained by Zeus, and Justice, who sits enthroned with the gods below, did not establish these human laws. Nor did I think that you, a mortal man, could with a single breath annul the unwritten laws of Heaven. They are not of today or yesterday. They do not die. She knew she had to die; if death is hastened, she counts it gain. Creon snaps that the most stubborn wills are soonest broken — like over-heated iron. He will not let a woman master him.

Ismene is brought out, distraught. She tries, against Antigone's earlier refusal, to claim a share of the guilt — let me die with you. Antigone refuses sharply: you wouldn't act with me at first. Don't claim a work you had no hand in. Sophocles makes the rejection painful: Ismene loves her sister and is being denied even the comfort of sharing the death. Creon orders both girls arrested. Ismene asks the question that should give the king pause — would you kill your own son's promised bride? Creon shrugs. Aye — let him raise his seed from other fields. The collision the play was built around has happened. The rest is the working out.