Some background about the play.
Third play in Sophocles’ Oedipus trilogy following Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus (ORO, 5th entry).
Antigone along with her sister Ismene and her brothers Eteocles and Polynices, is the offspring of the incestuous relationship of her father Oedipus and his mother-wife Jocasta. Antigone accompanied her father to Colonus, where he dies, to meet with her uncle Creon. When Antigone returns she finds her brothers fighting over the thrown, neither are successful in that they both kill one another. Creon takes over the Crown in the absence of a proper ruler and declares that Polynices will not receive a burial, while giving full military honors to Eteocles. When Antigone disobeys his order, he feels that to keep public order he must punish his niece by confining her to a subterranean place till death. What he had not realized was that his son, Haemon, had so loved his cousin that he would follow her to his own demise. (ORO, 5th entry)
"Antigone" The Oxford Companion to World mythology. David Leeming. Oxford University Press, 2004. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Central Washington University. 28 October 2010 <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t208.e100>
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