Creon
You, you with your face bent to the ground, do you admit, or deny that you did this?
Antigone
I declare it and make no denial.
Creon
To the Guard.
You can take yourself wherever you please,
[445]
free and clear of a heavy charge.Exit Guard.
To Antigone.
You, however, tell me—not at length, but briefly—did you know that an edict had forbidden this?
Antigone
I knew it. How could I not? It was public.
Creon
And even so you dared overstep that law?
Antigone
[450]
Yes, since it was not Zeus that published me that edict, and since not of that kind are the laws which Justice who dwells with the gods below established among men. Nor did I think that your decrees were of such force, that a mortal could override the unwritten
[455]
and unfailing statutes given us by the gods. For their life is not of today or yesterday, but for all time, and no man knows when they were first put forth. Not for fear of any man's pride was I about to owe a penalty to the gods for breaking these.
[460]
Die I must, that I knew well （how could I not?）. That is true even without your edicts. But if I am to die before my time, I count that a gain. When anyone lives as I do, surrounded by evils, how can he not carry off gain by dying?
[465]
So for me to meet this doom is a grief of no account. But if I had endured that my mother's son should in death lie an unburied corpse, that would have grieved me. Yet for this, I am not grieved. And if my present actions are foolish in your sight,
[470]
it may be that it is a fool who accuses me of folly.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
Table of Contents:
Sophocles. The Antigone of Sophocles. Edited with introduction and notes by Sir Richard Jebb. Sir Richard Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1891.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.