Antigone

Why it’s on the list: Sophocles’s tragedy of a sister who buries her brother against the king’s decree — the permanent text on obligation to the law versus obligation above it, where both sides are right.

Where I heard about it

• Founders Classical Academy — on the ninth-grade reading list at the classical school in Lewisville, Texas, posted by the Classic Learning Test in September 2026 as an example of what a classical curriculum assigns. The full eight-year sequence is on Founders Classical Academy Reading List.

About this edition

Oedipus’s sons have killed each other besieging Thebes. Creon rules that one is to be buried with honours and the other left for the dogs, and their sister Antigone buries him anyway. First performed around 441 BC. Both of them are right, which is what makes it a tragedy rather than an injustice — the city’s claim and the family’s claim are each real and cannot both be met. The school assigns it alongside Oedipus, though Sophocles wrote it first — it reads the family in story order rather than composition order.

Connections

• Founders Classical Academy Reading List — the curriculum this came from; 56 unique titles across 5th through 12th grade.
• Classical Education — the movement whose canon this list is.
• Sophocles
• Oedipus the King
• Classics
• Greek Tragedy