Antigone
Sophocles' Antigone has been widely interpreted as a play about a young woman's admirable courage of conviction. This rather straightforward interpretation is largely the result of a plot that revolves around Antigone's determination to honor her dead brother by giving him a proper burial, in spite of the King's edict that his corpse should be left to rot. Thus, Antigone's tragic fate is seen as the result of her laudable defiance of an unjust ruling rather than the result of a flaw in her own character. However, on closer analysis, there is ground to argue that Sophocles' purpose was not to create a play on praiseworthy virtues but to highlight the fact that actions motivated by a lack of temperance and hubris inevitably lead to tragic consequences.
The interpretation that Antigone is a morality play that focuses on the ideals of religion, honor and courage is perfectly understandable if viewed from the deontological perspective. Such a perspective would naturally evaluate Antigone's actions on the basis of the deed alone and not its consequence. Accordingly, Antigone's clear desire to ensure that her brother, Polyneices, receives a proper burial in keeping with Greek religious belief would be seen as upholding the ideal of religion. For, as she says, "A sinless sinner, banned awhile on earth,...
There were many other gods and goddesses and other supernatural beings in both mythologies (Meeks 2002). There were godlings, demigods, river nymphs and tree dryads and other mythical creatures, such as satyrs, comprising the entire belief systems. These systems were polytheistic as well as animistic. The system held that every tree, river and every part of nature had a spirit or energy behind it. Hercules was a famous demigod (Meeks).
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