In many places the chorus in Sophocles’ play, Antigone, speaks of yielding to sound council as a virtue and refusing to yield to authority as a vice. When Haemon tells his father that the people of the state are speaking ill of him and believe that Antigone was not wrong to bury her brother, the chorus begs Creon to listen to his advice. When Teiresias tells Creon that the gods are angered by Creon’s refusal to bury his nephew and having his niece buried alive and warns him that the gods will punish him, again the chorus begs Creon to listen Teiresias’s advice and submit to the authority of the gods.
On the other hand, while Antigone was not believed to have been wrong in burying her brother, the chorus tells her that she was wrong in having refused to submit to Creon’s authority, saying, “it is ill to disobey the powers who hold by might the sway. Thou hast withstood authority, a self-willed rebel, thou must die.”
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