Martyrdom and conflict: the fate of Antigone in tragic drama

Abstract

Acts of martyrdom occur at points in the history of societies when they are riven by fundamental conflicts – not only between competing political authorities, but between divergent fundamental conceptions of just where authority in a society and culture should lie. For many commentators, Ancient Greece provides us with an example of just such a society, one which was riven by a conflict between sacred and secular visions of foundational authority. This latter found expression in fifth-century BC Athens in the development of tragedy, a dramatic form which although it had its origins in sacred ritual was at the same time preoccupied with a continuing debate between the legitimacy of the claims upon human conduct and ethics of temporal and transcendent powers. Perhaps chief amongst the classical tragedies to address this issue is Sophocles’ Antigone, which presents to its audience the spectacle of the daughter of Oedipus sacrificing herself for the sake of eternal laws in the face of the imperatives of laws more explicitly temporally constrained.