Antigone Entombed Alive (Sophocles)

Catalogue ID: 03-heroes/186-antigone-entombed-cave-sophocles

Cycle: Heroes — Theban / Antigone

Version line: Attic tragic — Sophocles *Antigone* (cave tomb and suicide)

Sources: Sophocles, *Antigone* 773–780, 883–943, 1192–1243; Apollodorus, *Library* 3.7.1

Source file: /workspace/greek-myth-catalogue/03-heroes/186-antigone-entombed-cave-sophocles.md

Characters

Antigone — entombed; hangs herself
Chorus of Theban elders — witness her final exit
Creon — orders the cave; late repentance
Haemon — finds her; kills himself
Ismene — sister spared the same doom
Polynices — the brother she buried (prior)
Tiresias — warns of pollution (prompts the failed rescue)

Places

Rock-chamber — living burial and suicide
Thebes — Creon’s city and decree

Themes

Narrative

Creon condemned Antigone not to public stoning but to be sealed in a rock-chamber with scant food—formally leaving her death to the gods. She was led out singing her own lament, comparing herself to Niobe, deprived of marriage and of mourning rites for herself while she had given them to Polynices. Tiresias then warned Creon that the city was polluted; the king relented too late. Messengers found Antigone already hanged by her veil in the tomb. Haemon clasped her corpse, spat at his father, and fell on his sword. The cave entombment is Sophocles’ distinctive legal–ritual cruelty: a living burial that still becomes Antigone’s chosen death, triggering the ruin of Creon’s house.