"Where would a contemporary ancient Athenian audience's sympathies lie in Sophocles' Antigone: with Creon, Antigone, or both?"

Before tackling such a question, we should consider the context in which Sophocles was writing, and in which his play is set. Typically in fifth-century Athens, a mention of Thebes would be met with hostility as a key enemy to Athens, having ‘betrayed’ the Greek alliance by siding with the invading Persians in 480 BC. Given this perspective, therefore, one might imagine that Theban suffering would not have been met with empathy, due to the fresh conflict between the two states; this being a tragedy written and directed by one of the foremost playwrights in Athens, however, audience members, within the safety of an almost entirely Athenian audience, would have, as usual, suspended their disbelief and engaged in cathartic relief. Moreover, Antigone follows a series of terrible events, including the murder of a King, the tragic undoing of the inadvertently incestuous King Oedipus, and Civil War ended only by mutual fratricide, and so we as an audience are meant to empathise with characters, not only for the suffering they have endured, but also since, due to the collapse of their city-state, all action they have taken is to attempt to re-establish some form of structure in the absence of one.

            In spite of our sympathy for all characters in Antigone, the polarity of the play’s plot, it can be argued, means we must ultimately side with one character or the other in the struggle between Antigone, daughter of the former King Oedipus who argues that both her brothers should be buried, and Creon, who, as new King of Thebes, attempts to restore order in the city by shifting all blame onto those he had branded ‘anarchists’ and has decreed that anyone who attempts to bury Polyneices, the ‘anarchists’’ leader, will be executed. Fifth-century Athenians might have been alarmed by a woman making such a political statement without a man’s aid – particularly given that the play was performed in 441BCE before many of Euripides’ powerful, independent female characters – yet, equally, they, as lovers of democracy, would have rejected Creon’s favouring autocratic power, ruling over all Thebans according to his sole judgement and opinion. Just as there are flaws in both characters, they also show strength: both are resolute in their ideologies, Antigone in obeying the gods’ will over mortal low, upholding virtue ethics, and Creon in making examples of individuals to reinstate political order in Thebes for the greater good of the people, supporting the consequentialist strategy of the maximum benefit for the maximum number of people. As characters of passion and strong persuasive ability, the power dynamic in their dialogues, as well as in conversation with others, scintillates from line to line; to decide which character, if either in particular, an Athenian audience would have supported, we must look at individual moments in the play where we, and, therefore, most likely a fifth-century Athenian audience, sympathise with one, the other, or both.