Antigone probably first performed about 442 b c is another tragedy centered on the flaw of stubborn pride it also presents the conflict between secular law and divine law a stubborn king creon of thebes refuses to allow the equally stubborn antigone to bury the body of her brother polynices despite the entreaties of creons wife and son creon orders her death but she commits suicide as does creons wife and son the play has excellent characterizations it has a very tragic tone . Echoing through western culture for more than two millennia sophocles antigone has been a touchstone of thinking about human conflict and human tragedy the role of the divine in human life and the degree to which men and women are the creators of their own destiny this exciting new translation of the play is extremely faithful to the greek eminently playable and poetically powerful. The greek tragedy in new translations is based on the conviction that poets like aeschylus sophocles and euripides can only be properly rendered by translators who are themselves poets scholars may it is true produce useful and perceptive versions but our most urgent present need is for a re creation of these plays as though they had been written freshly and greatly by masters fully at home in the english of our own times with these words the late william arrowsmith announced . Based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves can properly recreate the celebrated and timeless tragedies of aeschylus sophocles and euripides the greek tragedy in new translations series offers new translations that go beyond the literal meaning of the greek in order to evoke the poetry of the originals the series seeks to recover the entire extant corpus of greek tragedy quite as though the ancient tragedians wrote in the english of our own time under the . Antigone greek tragedy in new translations oedipus the former ruler of thebes has died now when his young daughter antigone defies her uncle kreon the new ruler because he has prohibited the burial of her dead brother she and he enact a primal conflict between young and old woman and man individual and ruler family and state