Role Of Universal Law In Antigone

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Hi! Welcome to the Museum of Greek Art. As you can see, Greek culture has influenced the world around us. In every Greek play there is a lesson taught and learned. Sophocles wrote many great plays including The Three Theban Plays. This sketch represents an important scene in the play Antigone. It depicts on when universal law and civil law do not match up. You are indeed justified to follow universal divine law if the civil law goes against it. Another theme of truth, in the play is depicted in the picture. The theme of universal law and what you know is right versus civil law and what your told to follow is depicted throughout the play. Antigone, the women crying in the picture, is an independent women that stands up for what she believes in. Creon, her uncle the king of Thebes, bans anyone from burying …show more content…
Polynices is Antigone's brother who is lying dead upon the stone in the picture. Creon enforces the stringent civil law to his land saying, ''Polynices,... a proclamation has forbidden the city to dignify him with burial, mourn him at all. No, he must be left unburied, his corpse carrion for the birds and dogs to tear, an obscenity for the citizens to behold!'' (Sophocles 68). Creon is saying Polynices is a interloper to their land who tried to kill them and anyone that tries to mourn him will be killed. Antigone does not see Creon's actions as justifiable under the Gods. In Greek culture leaving a body unburied is seen as horrifying, and breaks universal divine law. A burial is seen as respect for the life and death of that person. Everyone is entitled to a burial. The Greeks thought that a burial was necessary in order to desecrate the soul and go to the underworld. Antigone stands up for divine law saying, ''I will bury him myself. And even if I die in the
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