Greek Poetry & Drama
Sophocles, Antigone 499–525 — Love, Kinship and the Dead
In this confrontation with Creon, Antigone defends the burial of Polynices not only through divine obligation but through kinship. The exchange culminates in one of the most famous lines of Greek tragedy: οὔτοι συνέχθειν, ἀλλὰ συμφιλεῖν ἔφυν — “I was not born to share in hatred, but in love.”
Text Information
Author: Sophocles Work / Passage: Antigone 499–525 Language: Ancient Greek (Attic) Genre: Athenian tragedy Dramatic setting: Antigone has been arrested after performing burial rites for Polynices and now confronts Creon publicly.
Original Greek
38th Scroll Translation
ANTIGONE: Why then do you delay? None of your words pleases me — and may they never please me — just as my words are naturally displeasing to you. Yet what greater glory could I have won than by placing my own brother in a grave? All these men would say that they approve, if fear did not close their mouths. But tyranny is fortunate in many things: it is free to do and say whatever it wishes.
CREON: You alone among these Thebans see it that way.
ANTIGONE: They see it too, but before you they keep their mouths shut.
CREON: Are you not ashamed to think differently from them?
ANTIGONE: There is nothing shameful in honoring those born from the same womb.
CREON: Was not the man who died on the other side also your blood?
ANTIGONE: My blood — from the same mother and the same father.
CREON: Then why do you honor this one with a service that dishonors the other?
ANTIGONE: The dead man will not testify to that.
CREON: He would, if you honor this man equally with the impious one.
ANTIGONE: It was no slave who died, but a brother.
CREON: One was ravaging this land; the other stood in its defense.
ANTIGONE: Yet Hades desires equal observance of these rites.
CREON: But the good man should not receive a share equal to the bad.
ANTIGONE: Who knows whether these things are holy in the world below?
CREON: An enemy never becomes a friend, not even when he dies.
ANTIGONE: I was not born to share in hatred, but in love.
CREON: Then go below and, if you must love, love them there. While I live, no woman shall rule me.
Translation Notes
“What greater glory?” — κλέος / εὐκλεέστερον
Antigone describes burial of her brother as the source of the greatest κλέος, glory or renown. The vocabulary is striking because kleos belongs deeply to the heroic language of public reputation. Antigone turns that language away from battlefield achievement and toward an act of burial that Creon has declared criminal.
“My own brother” — αὐτάδελφον
The passage repeatedly intensifies the language of kinship. Antigone first calls Polynices her αὐτάδελφος, her own brother; she later speaks of honoring those ὁμοσπλάγχνοι, literally those who share the same womb or inward parts, and then insists that both dead men are ὅμαιμοι, of the same blood.
Fear and the silent city
Antigone claims that the Thebans would approve her action if fear did not shut their mouths. The passage does not give an independent vote of the Theban population, so her statement is not objective proof of universal support.
Hades and “equal” rites
At line 519 Antigone shifts the argument beneath the political categories of defender and attacker. Creon distinguishes the good man from the bad; Antigone points toward Hades and the obligations governing the dead.
“Who knows whether these things are holy below?”
Antigone does not claim complete knowledge of divine judgment. Her question introduces an important limit: Creon speaks with certainty about who deserves what, while Antigone asks whether the values of the world below necessarily reproduce his political judgment.
“I was not born to share in hatred, but in love” — line 523
The line is often translated more smoothly as “I was born to love, not hate.” The compounds contain συν-, and the exact force of that prefix has been debated. The 38th Scroll translation keeps the traditional relational force because it fits the immediate exchange: Creon demands that Antigone continue to share his classification of Polynices as an enemy; she refuses to participate in that hatred.
Dramatic Context
Lines 499–525 occur immediately after Antigone has openly admitted burying Polynices and defended the gods' unwritten ordinances against Creon's decree.
The earlier speech at Antigone 450–460 establishes the question of authority: can a mortal proclamation override obligations Antigone regards as divine and ancient?
This later exchange makes the argument personal.
Creon asks whether Eteocles, who died defending Thebes, was not equally Antigone's brother. Antigone agrees. Creon therefore argues that equal burial honors erase the moral difference between defender and attacker.
Antigone refuses the conclusion.
Interpretation: Enemy and Brother
The most important opposition in the passage is not simply law versus love.
It is enemy versus brother.
Creon describes Polynices through his action against Thebes. Antigone describes him through a relationship that remains after death.
Both descriptions are true within the drama.
That is what makes the conflict tragic.
“Where Love Is Law”
The phrase “Where love is law” in Sacred Mask is not a quotation from Sophocles.
It is a modern compression of two different Sophoclean moments.
At Antigone 450–460, Antigone invokes the gods' unwritten and unfailing ordinances against Creon's mortal proclamation.
At line 523, confronted with Creon's insistence that an enemy remains an enemy after death, she answers:
I was not born to share in hatred, but in love.
The song brings those ideas together.
From the Text to Sacred Mask
This passage supplies one of the central emotional structures of Sacred Mask.
The song's Antigone refuses the idea that a public label — enemy, traitor, criminal — can exhaust what a dead person is.
Creon says that enmity survives the grave.
Antigone refuses to follow him there.
Relationship to Antigone 450–460
Antigone 450–460 — The Unwritten Laws establishes Antigone's argument about the limits of mortal decree.
Antigone 499–525 shows what that argument means when Creon forces her to choose between the political identity of Polynices as enemy and the familial identity of Polynices as brother.
The first passage asks what law can command.
The second asks what hatred can erase.
Selected Sources and Further Reading
- Sophocles. Antigone 499–525. Greek text, Centre for the Greek Language, Digital Library of Ancient Greek Literature.
- Jebb, Richard C. The Antigone of Sophocles. Cambridge University Press, 1891.
- Storr, Francis, ed. Sophocles, Volume I. 1912.
- Petrović, Ivana. “Die Bedeutung des Verses 523 in der Antigone des Sophokles.” Acta Antiqua 41.3–4 (2001): 359–362.
Continue Exploring
More from the Ancient Texts Library
Browse the full Ancient Texts library or return to the composition archive to explore the music and historical commentary built from these sources.