Tyranny and Blood: Rethinking Creon

This essay revisits Sophocles's Theban tragedies to question the usual interpretation of Creon as a tyrant intent on forcing a masculine "rule of law" on an innocent Antigone. By looking at Hölderlin's German translation of Antigone and what we know about kingship and kinship in ancient Greece, I offer an alternative interpretation that shows the character of Creon in a different light, reinforcing claims made by Bernard Williams and Martin Heidegger, among others, about the ways in which we misunderstand the Greeks, and some of the consequences of doing so.