Autodidact: Sophocles’ Antigone
Autodidact: Sophocles’ Antigone I by Thomas Fleming Sophocles is among the most misunderstood writers of antiquity. In liberal interpretations, he has been made into a kind of rational and liberal humanist. In fact, he was a political and religious reactionary. Religious and skeptical of sophistry, Sophocles was both a profound writer and an Athenian citizen who served his city in war and peace. His works are a warning against intellectual and political arrogance, and if Pericles (whom he seems not to have liked) had listened, Athens would never have hurled itself into a campaign of imperialism and war that proved...