Scene 1
The sisters before the gates
Antigone summons her sister Ismene outside the palace gates before sunrise. The civil war ended yesterday; their two brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, killed each other at the seventh gate; their uncle Creon, the new king, has decreed that Eteocles will be buried with full honors and Polyneices left to rot outside the walls. Anyone who buries him will be stoned to death. Antigone tells Ismene she is going to bury Polyneices anyway and asks her sister to help. Ismene refuses — they are women, the men hold the power, their family is already destroyed by Oedipus's curse, one more transgression will finish the line. Antigone walks off alone toward the body. The chorus enters as the sun rises.
Scene 2
The chorus enters
The chorus of Theban elders enters at sunrise and sings the parodos — the entry-song. They celebrate the previous night's victory: the Argive army of Polyneices has been driven back, its proud captains killed at the seven gates, its boast struck down by Zeus. The two brothers, born of one mother to one father, drove their lances into each other and both perished. Now Victory returns to Thebes. The chorus calls for feasting and dancing. But the song ends mid-rejoicing — the elders see Creon approaching, summoned them as his trusted councilors, and break off to hear what their new king has to say.
Scene 3
Creon proclaims the edict
Creon enters and addresses the elders. He explains his policy: country before kin, no traitor honored, the state is the ship that holds all our fortunes. He proclaims the edict aloud — Eteocles buried with honor, Polyneices left to rot. The chorus accepts it. Then a guard arrives, frightened, with news that someone has already covered the corpse with a thin scattering of dust and disappeared. Creon explodes. He accuses the guards of having been bribed, threatens torture, sends the man back to find the culprit on pain of death. The book closes with the guard fleeing, swearing he will never come back. He will, in two scenes, with Antigone in his arms.
Scene 4
The Ode to Man
The chorus sings the most famous ode in Greek tragedy. Many wonders there are, but nothing more wondrous than man — who sails the surging sea, who furrows the earth, who tames the bull and the stag and the rough-maned steed, who has taught himself speech and swift thought and civic wit. He has provision for everything. Even grim plague he has learned to endure. Yet for death he has found no cure. And when his cleverness turns from the laws of the gods, his city falls. The ode ends mid-thought as the elders look up — the guard has come back, with Antigone in chains, and the song is broken.
Scene 5
Antigone before Creon
The guard returns with Antigone in chains. He explains how she was caught — the guards swept the dust off the body, sat upwind, and toward midday a whirlwind of dust blotted out the sky; when it cleared she was standing over the corpse, wailing like a mother bird at a robbed nest, pouring libations from a bronze urn. Creon questions her. She admits everything without flinching and argues that the gods' unwritten laws precede his decree. Creon condemns her. Ismene comes out and tries to share the guilt; Antigone refuses to let her. Creon orders both arrested. Ismene reminds him Antigone is engaged to his son. Creon does not care. Let Haemon raise his seed from other fields.
Scene 6
The curse on the house
The chorus sings the second stasimon. Three times blessed are those who have never tasted pain; once the curse of Heaven infects a bloodline, the infection spreads generation after generation, and each must drain the cup. They name the house of Labdacus — Antigone's family — and trace the doom from old Cadmus through Oedipus to the brothers and now to the daughters. The light that dawned on its last-born is gone. The bloody axe of Fate has felled the handsome tree that flowered late. The ode then turns to Zeus: untouched by Time, throned in dazzling light, you reign omnipotent. All that exceeds the mean is punished. The song ends as Haemon is seen approaching.
Scene 7
Haemon's warning
Haemon enters. He does not come to defend Antigone. He comes to warn his father. He begins respectfully: I am yours, father, and your wisdom is my helm. Then he reports what the city is saying — that Antigone is the noblest of women, that she dies for the most generous of crimes, that her name should be written in gold. He warns Creon: no man is wise enough to stand alone; the trees that bend in a flood survive while those that resist are torn out. Creon hears it as betrayal. Father and son escalate, line for line, until Creon orders Antigone killed in front of Haemon. Haemon swears never to see his father again and storms out. The play's last open door has just slammed.
Scene 8
The ode to Eros
The chorus sings a short ode to Eros — Love, irresistible in fight, who pillows all night long on a maiden's cheek. All the god's subjects are mad; even the wisest heart falls into folly at the touch of his poisoned dart. The chorus blames Eros for the strife of kinsman with kin they have just witnessed: love for Antigone has set Haemon against his father. The song is brief. Creon then announces the sentence in detail — not stoning after all but a slower death: she will be sealed alive in a rock-cut cave with a few days' food, leaving the gods to decide her fate without making the city itself blood-guilty.
Scene 9
Antigone goes to the cave
Antigone is led toward the cave. She gives the play's longest lyric speech — farewell to the bright sun, lament that no marriage song will be sung for her, that Death is the groom she weds. She names the pollution of her father's house and the brother whose burial has cost her this. She walks offstage to be sealed in. Then Tiresias the blind prophet arrives, led by a boy. He reports the signs he has seen: bird-cries are wrong, the altar fires will not light, the city is sick because dogs and birds have been feeding on Polyneices's body. He tells Creon: yield. Creon accuses him of being bribed. Tiresias, provoked, prophesies that Creon's own son will die in payment, and leaves.
Scene 10
The late yielding
Tiresias has gone. The chorus, finally, gives Creon direct counsel: that man has never been wrong yet; listen to him. Creon, shaken, asks what he should do. The chorus answers without hedging: go yourself, free the girl from her cave, build a tomb for the unburied man. Now. The vengeance of the gods is swift to overtake the impenitent. Creon obeys. He calls for axes, dispatches his henchmen, and runs out himself to undo the order he has spent the play enforcing. The chorus then sings a hymn to Dionysus, the city's patron, asking the god to come and heal the plague Creon has brought on Thebes. The hymn is hopeful. It is also too late.
Scene 11
The dead
A messenger arrives from the cave. They had first stopped to give Polyneices proper burial — washed the body, built a pyre, raised a mound. Then they went to the cave and heard a wailing voice from inside. Creon recognized his son's voice. They forced the rocks aside: Antigone had hanged herself with her own veil; Haemon was clasping her cold body. When Creon called to him, Haemon glared, spat in his face, lunged with his sword, missed, and fell on the blade himself. Eurydice has overheard the report. She walks back inside and cuts her own throat at the altar. Creon comes onstage carrying his son's body and learns both deaths are his. He begs to be killed. The chorus refuses him even that.