Antigone

When the brothers Eteocles and Polynices kill each other in the fight for Thebes, the new king Creon honors one with burial and leaves the other to rot as a traitor, forbidding anyone to touch the body. Their sister Antigone refuses to obey. She buries her brother in defiance of the law, insisting that the unwritten commands of the gods outrank any edict of the state. Creon’s pride will not bend, and the collision destroys them both, along with nearly everyone he loves. Written around 441 BCE, this is Sophocles’ searching study of conscience against authority and family duty against civic order, a conflict that has kept the play alive for two and a half thousand years. Available as a free PDF and EPUB edition.