Antigone

It begins with a burial. Before Creon speaks, before Antigone defies him, before law is written or broken, a body lies outside the walls of Thebes. Unburied. This is where the story starts. With a fact the Greeks treated as prior to politics: the dead must be buried. The audience in the theater of DionysusContinue reading “Antigone”

The Use of Myth

Hesiod stands at the beginning. He is the first to write down stories that had been circulating for centuries. His account is not a moral arc in the way the Hebrew tradition would later tell its story. Hesiod is part farmer’s almanac and part chronicler. This is how the seasons work, and this is whoContinue reading “The Use of Myth”