Antigone

When Creon denied burial to her brother Polynices, Antigone strewed the dust herself, answering the king’s law with “the unwritten and unfailing ordinances of the gods.” Walled alive in a rock tomb, she hanged herself — and Creon’s son and wife followed, leaving the lawgiver alive amid the ruin of his house. Hers is the classic collision of conscience and decree, argued over from Aristotle to Hegel and never settled.