The truth is that Creon commits a terrible act owing to a terrible provocation. His act is the insult to Polynices’ body, which he maintains at the cost of Antigone’s life; his justification is the fact that the dead man, though a Theban, was attacking Thebes and would have destroyed the State. Antigone stands for respect to private affection, Creon for respect to the community. It is impossible to say at the outset which is the more important, and the problem may well be insoluble. But it is precisely because of this that the _Antigone_ is a tragedy. To accept the customary view, and yet insist that Sophocles is a great dramatist, is mere superstition; the work becomes the record of an insane murder. On _a priori_ grounds, then, we may believe that Sophocles by no means condemns Creon off-hand. It is not satisfactory to argue that Thebes should have been satisfied with the death of the invader. Since he was a Theban his attack was looked on as the foulest treachery, which merited extreme penalty, both by way of revenge and as a warning to others. (Just the same view is held by the authorities in the _Ajax_.) The play presents a problem both for the king and for his kinswoman: “I am right to punish this traitor’s corpse; am I justified in killing others who thwart the punishment?” “I am right to show love and pity for my dead brother; am I justified in flouting the State?” Antigone is only Creon over again with a different equipment of sympathies. That one loves his country with a cold concentration which finds enemies and treachery everywhere, while the other passionately loves her dead brother, should not blind us to the truth that Antigone has all Creon’s hardness and narrowness, and especially all his obstinacy. That tenderness and womanly affection which we attribute to the princess are amiable inventions of our own, except the love which she bears Polynices. This love is not to be in any sense belittled, but it is simply an instinct, like that of Creon in matters of State, an instinct to which she will, like him, sacrifice all else. If Creon sacrifices Antigone for his ideal, she sacrifices Hæmon for hers. He shows brutality to his son, she to her sister. That a compromise between the demands of the State and private conscience is, however unwelcome, necessary, never occurs to either party, and those who, like Hæmon and Ismene, urge such a thought upon them are insulted. This blindness to the psychology of Antigone has led to actual meddling with Sophocles’ text. In her last long speech occurs a celebrated “difficulty,” namely, her statement[308] that if the dead man had been a child or husband of hers, she would not thus have given her life; but the case of Polynices is different, since (her father and mother being dead) she can never have another brother. These lines are generally bracketed as spurious because unworthy of Antigone’s character and inconsistent with the reason for her act which she has already[309]