Use a major dramatic text to analyse the nature of power and authority in an ancient society

What this dot point is asking

Section C of the course, the Nature of Power and Authority in an Ancient Society, requires study of at least one major dramatic text. Drama is valuable to historians because it was performed in public, before mass audiences, and dramatised the political and moral problems the society cared about. A play is not a record of events, but it is strong evidence for the ideas, anxieties and values of the people who wrote and watched it. Sophocles' Antigone, first performed in Athens around 441 BCE, is a classic example.

The plot stages a direct clash over authority. After a civil war at Thebes, the new ruler Creon decrees that the body of the rebel Polynices must lie unburied, on pain of death. His niece Antigone defies the decree and buries her brother, appealing to the unwritten, eternal laws of the gods that demand burial of kin. Creon, asserting the authority of the state and his own command, condemns her. The play follows the catastrophe that results: Antigone, Creon's son and his wife all die, and Creon is left broken, having learned too late the limits of his power.

The play sets out competing bases of authority. Creon claims legitimacy from his office and from the need for order after war, arguing that the city must be obeyed and that defiance breeds anarchy. Antigone claims a higher authority in divine law and family duty. The chorus and the seer Tiresias gradually side against Creon, suggesting that authority which ignores the gods and human conscience becomes tyranny. The Greek concept of hubris, overweening pride that invites divine punishment, frames Creon's downfall.

Read as a historical source, the play tells us much about Athenian values: a deep concern with the rule of law, a belief that even rulers are bound by divine and customary limits, respect for religious obligation, and unease about concentrated personal power, fitting for a democratic city wary of tyranny. It also reflects gendered expectations, since part of Creon's outrage is that he has been defied by a woman. These are precisely the structures and practices Section C asks you to investigate.

For a TASC answer in Section C, treat the dramatic text exactly as you would any other source: identify its origin and purpose, judge what it can and cannot show, and corroborate it with other evidence such as the institutions of Athenian democracy, the speeches of orators, and the writings of Thucydides and Plato on power. Used this way, a play like Antigone becomes a window into how an ancient society defined legitimate authority and the limits of obedience.