Burying the Dead

First read Sophocles' Antigone, presented just below. A short discussion will follow.

Discussion of Antigone.

See Charles Segal’s Sophocles’ Tragic World, Chapter 5, "Lament and Closure" in Antigone.

Assignment: Read Euripides’, The Suppliant Women and Aristophanes’ The Frogs.

I’ve also provided two attachments. The first is a short excerpt from Herodotus concerning an event that happened before the battle of Salamis during the Persian invasion in 480 BC. That sea battle is considered one of the most important in the history of Western Civilization. The event concerns Eleusis and the Mysteries.

The second attachment is another timeline that will help put the dates of the events covered in the tragedies we’ve read in perspective along with the readings (Herodotus and Plato) from the classical age and those since the birth of Christ (Plutarch)