σέβειν. ‘Reverent action’ (meaning her loyalty to Polyneices) ‘is, in a sense, “εὐσέβεια”’: i.e. though it is not complete “εὐσέβεια”—which the Chorus regard as including loyalty to the State's laws— yet, so far as it goes, it deserves praise of the same kind. Cp. 924 “τὴν δυσσέβειαν εὐσεβοῦσ᾽ ἐκτησάμην”: by practising “εὐσέβεια” towards the dead, she had come to be thought, on the whole, “δυσσεβής”—as a law-breaker. The Chorus is here the apologist of Creon, and this concession is meant to emphasise the next sentence. Hence the purposed vagueness of σέβειν. The speaker avoids a direct reference to the peculiarly sacred and tender duty which Ant. had fulfilled. The proposed emendations (see cr. n.) would obliterate this touch.
This text is part of:
Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part III: The Antigone. Sir Richard C. Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1900.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.