Note: This was an assignment for Death and the Maiden

There were three components of funeral rites in Antigone’s day:  the Prothesis or laying out of the body, the Ekphora or the procession of the body through the streets, and the disposal of the body.  Although there is a perception that women were primarily responsible for the Prothesis and Ekphora phases of the process, there is evidence that women were only allowed to perform these rituals with men’s permission (Hame, 2008).  During the Prothesis ritual, which took place within 24 hours of death, the women of the household washed the body, anointed the body with oil, and  dressed it in new robes.  During this period, women also lamented the death and sang dirges to honor the dead.  The Ekphora, or procession, occurred three days after the death and men pulled the funeral cortege, but women led the lamentations.  The final phase in the death rituals was the disposition of the corpse.  At the time Antigone was written, adults in Greece were buried and men would have been responsible for digging the grave (Elizabeth, 2017).

Although the Greeks believed that the spirit left the body at the moment of death, denying a person burial rites was a grave affront to human dignity (The Met, 2003).  Creon chose to deny Polyneices a burial and to leave his body to “be left for all to see, unburied. His body ripped to shreds by vultures and wild dogs.”  He also intended for Polynices to be left unmourned (Sophocles, 2020).  However, while Creon could order that Prolynieces’ be left unburied, he could not control whether or not anyone mourned for him.  And Polynieces’ sister Antigone clearly mourned for her brother and she defied Creon’s order in order to give him a proper burial (Sophocles, 2020). 

In defying Creon, Antigone was acting in a manner uncharacteristic for a woman as even her sister Ismene reminder her that they were women and “weren’t meant to fight battles with men” because they were meant to be “ruled by whoever’s stronger” (Sophocles, 2020).  Although Antigone is not strong enough to remove Polynieces body from the battlefield and physically bury it, she does sprinkle dust over the body and these actions are equated with an actual burial.  In performing this part of the funeral rites, she is acting in a masculine manner (Hame, 2008) and as such she threatens Creon’s masculinity and forces him into a position of having to punish her because if he doesn’t, Creon also laments that he has to punish her because if he doesn’t, she will become a man and he will no longer be one.  I don’t believe that Antigone was deliberately acting in a masculine way to taunt Creon and I also do not believe that her actions were acts of feminism.  Instead, I believe they were simply acts of love for her brother.

Bibliography

Elizabeth. (2017, December 6). Women and Funeral Rites in Archaic and Classical Greece. Retrieved from Women in Antiquity: https://womeninantiquity.wordpress.com/2017/12/06/women-and-funeral-rites-in-archaic-and-classical-greece/#:~:text=When%20someone%20died%20during%20the,the%20deposition%20of%20the%20remains.

Hame, K. J. (2008). FEMALE CONTROL OF FUNERAL RITES IN GREEK TRAGEDY: KLYTAIMESTRA, MEDEA, AND ANTIGONE. Classical philology, 1-15.

Sophocles. (2020). ANTIGONE. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

The Met. (2003). Death, Burial, and the Afterlife in Ancient Greece. Retrieved from The Met: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dbag/hd_dbag.htm