People in ancient Greece heavily believed in fate. They believed that a person had their destiny laid out before they were born and nothing would change it. Sophocles, a playwright, used the theme of fate in his plays. One play in which fate is evident is Antigone, in which Creon suffers a terrible tragedy that he tried to avoid.

In the play Antigone, Creon orders that Antigone’s brother Polyneices’ dead body be left on the battle field and not buried. Antigone pleads with Creon to bury him and when Creon refuses, Antigone decides to bury Polyneices her self. When Creon learns of this, he sends Antigone to be buried alive and gets into a fight with his son.

After Creon orders the punishment on Antigone, Teiresias, a prophet, gives Creon a dire warning. Teiresias tells Creon that if he does not bury Polyneices and forgive Antigone then Creon “will not see the sun race through its cycle many times before you lose a child of your own loins, a corpse in payment for these corpses.” Creon quickly realizes that he has to listen to the God’s so he decides to bury Polyneices and forgive Antigone but he finds out it is too late; Antigone had killed herself and when Creon’s son saw her dead body, he killed himself as well. Later Creon’s wife killed herself because of the death of her son and cursed Creon right before she died.

Fate is clearly seen in this tragedy. Once Creon decided on a punishment, the Gods decided on a punishment for Creon. Even though Creon tried to fix his mistake, the God’s still followed through with their plan for Creon. Sophocles wanted to teach people that it is impossible to escape fate. Sophocles wanted people to have a catharsis of fear after reading his plays, something they definitely had after reading about the tragedies caused by fate.