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Sophocles'
The relevance that the themes of tragedy could have to issues affecting the city-state even in plays whose plots had ostensibly nothing to do with life in a polis shows up clearly in Sophocles' play entitled Ajax 6, presented in the early 440s B.C. The play bore the name of the second-best warrior (Achilles had been preeminent) in the Greek army that besieged Troy in the Trojan War. When his fellow Greek soldiers voted to award the armor of the dead Achilles7 to the wily Odysseus instead of himself, Ajax went on a berserk rampage against his former friends which the goddess Athena8 thwarted because Ajax had once rejected her help in battle. Disgraced by his failure to secure revengeAjax committed suicide.9 Odysseus then stepped in to convince the Greek chiefs to bury Ajax despite his attempted treachery because the future security of the army and the obligations of friendship demanded that they obey the divine injunction always to bury the dead. Odysseus' arguments 10in favor of burying Ajax anachronistically treat the army as if it were a polis, and his use of persuasive speech to achieve accommodation of conflicting individual interests to the benefit of the community corresponds to the way in which disputes in the polis were supposed to be resolved.Sophocles'
In his powerful play of 441 B.C. entitled Antigone 11, Sophocles presented a drama of harsh conflict between the family's moral obligation to bury its dead in obedience to divine command and the male-dominated city-state's need to preserve its order and defend its values. Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus12, the now-deceased former king of Thebes13, comes into conflict with her uncle, the new ruler, when he forbids the burial of one of Antigone's two brothers on the grounds he had been a traitor. This brother had attacked Thebes after the other brother had broken an agreement to share the kingship.14 Both brothers died in the ensuing battle, but Antigone's uncle had allowed the burial only of the brother who had remained in power. When Antigone brazenly defies her uncle15 by symbolically burying the allegedly traitorous brother, her uncle condemns her to die. He only realizes his error when sacrifices to the gods go wrong. His decision to punish Antigone ends in personal disaster when his son and then his wife kill themselves in despair. In this horrifying story of anger and death, Sophocles deliberately exposes the right and wrong on each side of the conflict. Although Antigone's uncle eventually acknowledges a leader's responsibility to listen to his people, the play offers no easy resolution of the competing interests of divinely-sanctioned moral tradition expressed by a woman and the political rules of the state enforced by a man.1 Aesch. Ag. 1 ff., Soph. Aj. 1 ff, Eur. Tro. 1 ff.
2 Perseus Encyclopedia entry for Sophocles, Sophocles' works
6 Soph. Aj. 1, portraits of Ajax on vases
7 Malibu 86.AE.286 [Vase], Apollod. vol. 2.219
11 Soph. Ant. 1, References to Antigone
12 References to Oedipus, Soph. OT 1, Boston 06.2447 [Vase]
13 Photos of Thebes, Perseus Encyclopedia entry for Thebes, References to Thebes