Sophocles lived from 495-405 BCE, so he could remember the battles of Salamis, Plataea and Mycale. He also saw the rise of democracy and empire in Athens, as well as the plague and the Peloponnesian War. In addition, he saw and knew the Sophistic movement, with its secular teachings (from scepticism about gods to outright atheism, relativism, the power of speech to make power, law is just convention, there is no real morality). He also saw war and oligarchs ravage democracy and Athens.
He was a general with Pericles in 441. He was one of the ten advisors who were chosen to help recover from the Sicilian disaster in 413. He also helped bring a new god to Athens, Asclepius (god of healing and doctors).
We do not know the date of Antigone, but it is generally placed in 442/1.

The background: similar to Euripides' Suppliants. Same events, same battle, same dead. Same problem. The Thebans, including one of the pair of brothers Polyneices and Eteocles, defeated a force led by the other brother which included Argives. The leaders of the attacking force were the "Seven against Thebes." The Thebans refused to allow burial of the dead. Euripides' Suppliants is about Athens' role in securing the burial of the Argive dead after that battle for Thebes. Sophocles' Antigone is about the burial of one brother, a native Theban, who is of course a traitor in the eyes of the other brother.

There were several "Theban" plays at Athens.
Thebes is an oligarchy and formerly a monarchy.
Athens is a democracy.
Even though the plays are set in the mythical past, they bear directly on contemporary issues:
Both are big regional powers and they periodically fight each other.
Thebes Medized (i.e. went over to the Persians in the wars against the Persian invading force in the early 5th centurty), Athens fought the Persians.
Athens welcomed Dionysios (the god of wine and the god of the Dionysia, at which the tragedies were performed)
Thebes initially rejected him (more on this in the Bacchae).

Creon
"Creon" means "ruler."
Is Creon "sensible, fair-minded, public-spirited, as are many patriarchal figures." "He does not know how to listen to anyone he considers inferior" (vii)
It was common for traitors to have no burial on pain of death for anyone who did bury a traitor.
"Creon had every reason to suppose that he was on safe ground in making this decree. He was making a fair distinction between two brothers, one that is more or less in keeping with accepted practice." (x)
"Creon tries to enforce a rational sort of justice that takes no notice of family ties and seeks to preserve the health of the city-state above all." (xi)
This effort is part of an overall strategy in Athens of Sophocles' time "that tried to put loyalty to the city ahead of the family and the extended family ties that were represented in burial rituals." (xi)
"His devotion to rational order and even-handed intelligence grows darker as his suspicions of conspiracy grow . . . The dreadful threat of civil war lies on him . . . he is obsesses with two ideas, both of them wrong: that the city is a ship at sea in a storm and that the people around him are swayed by money. The ship-of-state is a common trope, but an autocratic one, used mainly by enemies of democracy . . . none of Creon's antagonists care about money . . . His career is a living illustration of power subverting good judgment." (xix)
AND YET, "Creon does yield . . . he hears the chorus' plea for Ismene and spares her life . . . he also heeds the chorus about Tiresias, after the seer departs." (xx)

1. Are the gods against Creon? What does that mean?
2. Are they for Antigone?
3. If they are in fact against Creon, what does that mean about whether they are for Antigone?

Antigone
"Antigone" means "born contrary."
She is doing things "ordinary" Athenian women did not do: burial, standing up to leader, determining her own fate.... It is unclear whether the Athenian audience would have sympathized with her, but it is clear that they would have been less inclined to than we are in some ways. In other ways, they would have been more inclined to, as they would see her as standing up to a tyrant, and they had recent memories of tyrants in Greece.
She "... is committed totally to reverence, and nothing matters more to her than the particular obligation that she has with a person naturally, by birth (904-920). These ties mean far more to her than justice between her brothers; more than the city-state; more, even, then family ties such as marriage, which are chosen under human law and not given to her at birth." (xi)
"Funeral ceremony was of the utmost importance to ordinary Athenians, who took great pride in their claim to have forced Thebes to bury the Argive dead." (xi)
Against her it is said that she "is harsh and unloving, cruel to Ismene, and thoughtless of Haemon. Her justifications for burying her brother are not consistent with each other: first an appeal to a general unwritten law (the first such claim in history!‹lines 456-9) about burial, then a claim about her particular obligation to her brother. Antigone is vulnerable on both points. The unwritten law against non-burial exists in her imagination; the concept of unwritten law was unheard of before Antigone, and in any case it was legal to leave traitors unburied." (xvii)

Haemon
"Haemon" means, quite loosely "blood-related" (there is certainly a root meaning "blood" in the name).
Sons who stood up against fathers and threatened them were shocking to Athenians: that was impious.
Tries to sway his father by pointing out the sentiment of the people. Creon is trying to avoid stasis ("internal unrest," "civil war"), but if he goes against the sentiment of the people, how can he?
Urges flexibility, as do the chorus.
Impetuous youth in the right?

Ismene
"passive in the face of events. She is afraid to break the law, afraid of death, and unwilling to challenge male authority." (lines 59-62, xx)
BUT she tries to claim the crime after the fact.(540-545)

Interpretation
Can Antigone, Creon, and Haemon all be right? Ever-present unresolvable tension between individual and community? Between civil law and what is right?
Given that most of the characters change during the course of the play, can we say that one is right, one is wrong? (does Antigone change?)
What are the main themes of the play? What does it say about law?

The Chorus
The choral odes in Antigone are among the most magnificent in tragedy. Their relation to the events of the tragedy itself are often oblique: they are relevant, but not directly, and it is not possible to say exactly how they are meant to apply to the events of the tragedy. They are magnificent songs interspersed between magnificent drama.

332-375 is the "Ode to Man," which is about how humans invented their own means of survival by yoking the world to their use. Gods play no role, significantly, which makes this anthropologically interesting, and part of the sophistic movement of the time.

582-625 is about ate (pronounced ah-TAY). Ate is Zeus-sent and has struck the Labdacids (the family of Ismene and Antigone). Ate is a species of madness and includes the destruction that the madness causes.

781-800 is about sexual love.

944-987 is a list of myths that include premature burial and is ostensibly meant to comfort Antigone.

1115-1154 is a hymn to Dionysus praying for protection, healing, and dance.