The Crucial Role of Teiresias in Sophocles’ Antigone

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The Crucial Role of Teiresias in Sophocles’ Antigone

Antigone is a tragic play written by Sophocles in ancient Greece during approximately 441 B.C. The story is set in a palace in Thebes, a city within Greece. Teiresias is an old blind prophet who claims to be capable of seeing the future, he has yet to tell a prophesy to be untrue; he has immense credibility. A theme within the text is: quality not quantity. In this translation of Antigone, Teiresias has exactly 76 lines of text. Physically this is very little of a role; one could assume Teiresias is not an important character at all; however, this is untrue. Teiresias is a character with an extremely minute role, yet he has immense influence over the resolution of the story, the characters, and the decisions they choose to make.

Teiresias’ role in the story is relatively small in terms of stage time, yet what he says is so influential and important that it has an extreme effect over the attitude of Creon. Creon expresses his profound respect for Teiresias when he says, “I’ve always been attentive to your counsel … So ...

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