Antigone Lines 828 – 1,213 Questions and Answers
Study Questions
1. What threat does Haemon make?
2. How does the king interpret Haemon’s threat?
3. Whose fate does Antigone say is similar to her own?
4. How does the Chorus respond when Antigone compares her fate to the destiny of a women—Niobe—with immortal blood?
5. Why does Tiresias come to the palace?
6. What goes wrong with the omens and the offerings?
7. How have the altars been profaned?
8. How does Creon dismiss the prophecies Tiresias offers?
9. What is the most dreadful thing Tiresias says?
10. How do the masses feel about Creon according to Tiresias?
Answers
1. Haemon warns the king that there will be another death if Antigone is
executed.
2. The king interprets this as a threat on his life.
3. Antigone says that the fate of Niobe is similar to her own. Niobe was from a family whose tragedies and glories were in many ways similar to those of the House of Oedipus. Grief-stricken after she and her family are punished by the gods, Niobe is turned to stone and her tears run forever down the hard surface that once was flesh.
4. When Antigone compares her fate to Niobe’s, the Chorus says that she is taking comfort from comparing herself, a mere mortal, to someone who is descended from gods.
5. Tiresias comes to the palace to tell Creon that things are terribly wrong. He has long given the king advice, and feels it is his duty to do so again.
6. The gods will not accept the offerings, and the birds who speak omens are too gorged on carrion to share their knowledge.
7. The altars been profaned by scavenger beasts dragging bits of unburied flesh around the city.
8. Creon dismisses the prophecies Tiresias offers by accusing him of hoping to reap money by planting fear.
9. The most dreadful thing Tiresias says is that Creon’s decision to kill Antigone will cost the king a child of his own.
10. According to Tiresias, the masses now hate their king.
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