n a tomb,
though she is betrothed to his son Haemon. "Would you murder the bride
of your own son?" asks Ismene; but the king replies that there are
many other women in the world. Haemon now appears and tries to move
his father to mercy, but in vain, though he threatens to slay himself
if his bride is killed. Antigone is immured, but at last, moved by the
advice of the Chorus and the dire predictions of the seer Tiresias,
Creon changes his mind and hastens with men and tools to liberate the
virgin. When he arrives at the tomb he sees his son in it, clinging to
the corpse of Antigone, who had hanged herself. Horrified, the king
begs his son to come out of the tomb, but Haemon seizes his sword and
rushes forward to slay his father. The king escapes the danger by
flight, whereupon Haemon thrusts the sword into his own body, and
expires, clasping the corpse of his bride.

If we thus make Haemon practically the central figure of the tragedy,
it resembles a romantic love-story; but in reality Haemon is little
more than an episode. He has a quarrel with his father (who goes so
far as to threaten to kill his bride in his presence), rushes off in a
rage, and the tomb scene is not enacted, but merely related by a
messenger, in forty lines out of a total of thirteen hundred and
fifty. Much less still have we here a story of romantic love. Not one
of the fourteen ingredients of love can be found in it except
self-sacrifice, and that not of the right kind. I need not explain
once more that suicide from grief over a lost bride does not benefit
that bride; that it is not altruistic, but selfish, unmanly, and
cowardly, and is therefore no test whatever of love. Moreover, if we
examine the dialogue in detail we see that the motive of Haemon's
suicide is not even grief over his lost bride, but rage at his father.
When on first confronting Creon, he is thus accosted: "Have you heard
the sentence pronounced on your bride?" He answers meekly: "I have, my
father, and I yield to your superior wisdom, which no marriage can
equal in excellence;" and it is only gradually that his ire is aroused
by his father's abusive attitude; while at the end his first intention
was to slay his father, not himself. Had Sophocles understood love as
we understand it, he would have represented Haemon as drawing his
sword at once and moving heaven and earth to prevent his bride from
being buried alive.

But it is in examining the attitude of Antigone that we real