Antigone is the final chapter of a long saga of myths surrounding the house of Laius, King of Thebes, so it would have been very familiar to audiences in Athens when Sophocles’ original tragedy was first performed at the Great Dionysia festival around 440 BC.
Antigone is the teenage daughter of the infamous king Oedipus, who blinds himself and dies in exile after realising he has married his own mother, Jocasta. Antigone’s brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, agree to rule the city in alternative years, but soon their desire for power leads them to war, during which they slay one another. With all male heirs dead, Creon, brother of Jocasta, takes over as king of Thebes. This is the point at which our story begins: Antigone meets her sister Ismene outside the city walls to plot against the king’s order banning Polynices’ burial.