Characters
- Antigone — betrothed of Haemon; already dead (indirect cause)
- Chorus of Theban elders — witnesses Creon’s recognition
- Creon — husband; addressee of her dying curses; survivor in grief
- Eurydice — wife of Creon; mother of Haemon; suicides at the altar
- Haemon — son; his death triggers her suicide
- Menoeceus — other son; recalled in her lament (cf. 03/154)
- Messenger — reports Haemon’s death to her; later reports hers to Creon
Places
- Household altar — site of her suicide (Sophoclean staging)
- Rock tomb — offstage scene of Haemon’s and Antigone’s deaths
- Theban palace — Eurydice hears the news; kills herself within
- Thebes — city whose law Creon enforced at this cost
Themes
Narrative
Eurydice, wife of Creon and mother of Haemon (and of Megareus/Menoeceus in related Theban genealogy), appears late in Sophocles’ *Antigone*. She comes from the house as the messenger finishes recounting Haemon’s suicide over Antigone’s corpse. She listens in silence, then returns indoors without a word. The chorus fears the quiet. A second messenger reports she has stabbed herself at the household altar, cursing Creon as the killer of her sons—Haemon just dead, and (in her lament’s reach) the earlier loss of Megareus who died for Thebes.
Creon enters bearing Haemon’s body and learns his wife is dead within. The double blow completes his ruin: the king who would not bend to burial piety loses heir and queen in a single day. Eurydice’s suicide is not debated on stage like Antigone’s defiance; it is domestic, sudden, and final—the last blood-cost of the edict. Catalogue her apart from Haemon so the mother’s death stands as its own unit in the Theban household catastrophe.