Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Haemon, son of Creon and betrothed of Antigone, enters Sophocles’ play as the expected mediator between father and condemned bride. He begins with deference, then reports the city’s secret sympathy for Antigone and argues that a wise ruler bends—yields to reason and to the gods’ unwritten claims. Creon answers with the rhetoric of absolute rule: a son must obey; a woman must not defeat the state; anarchy is the worst evil. The quarrel turns vicious; Haemon vows Creon will never see his face again and leaves. After Teiresias’s warning Creon relents too late. At the rock tomb the king’s men find Antigone hanged by her own veil. Haemon clasps her corpse, spits in his father’s face when Creon arrives, and lunges with his sword—misses Creon, then drives the blade into his own side, embracing Antigone as he dies. The messenger’s speech makes the suicide the emotional center of Creon’s ruin, soon doubled by Eurydice’s self-killing at the news. Haemon thus dies not as a warrior of the Seven but as the son who chose love and piety over a father’s decree. Where 03/102 narrates the whole play, this entry holds Haemon’s agon and end as their own unit.