Antigone by Sophocles and The Bacchae by Euripides are undoubtedly games of antithesis and conflict, and this condition is personified in the manifestation of their characters, one completely opposite to the other. Both tragedians reveal tensions between two permanent and irreconcilable moral codes; the divine law represented by Antigone and Dionysus and the human law represented by Creon and Pentheus. The central aim is evidently the association between the law which has its consensus in political authority and the law which has its consensus in private conscience, the association of the obligations imposed on human beings as citizens and members of the State, and of the obligations imposed on them in the home as family members. Both of these laws appearing in their most crucial form are in direct conflict. Sophocles and Euripides include a great deal of controversial material, once the reader becomes aware of the questions behind their work. Investigations that concern the very fabric of life, which still today constitutes the garments of society. In Sophocles' Antigone, the most important theme is the concept of divine law versus human law. The play opens with the debate between sisters Antigone and Ismene over which law comes first: the devoted obligations of citizens, or civic duty. Antigone asks Ismene to help her bury her brother Polyneices, although the new king Creon has forbidden the burial under pain of death. It can be argued that Creon's edict, which deprived Polyneices of his funeral rites, is understandable. The young man had been killed perpetrating the most atrocious crime of which a citizen could be guilty, and Creon, as a responsible head of state, naturally assumed that exemplary punishment was the right of the guilty... middle of paper... .. others or myself? Haemon: It is not a city at all, owned by one man. Creon: What? The city belongs to the king: this is the law! (819-25)Furthermore, Creon ignores what had historically been the city's best counsel, the blind prophet Tiresias. Despite Teiresias' warnings that his “high resolve bringing this plague upon Thebes” will “fell him down with the sorrows [he has] perfected,” Creon's stubborn commitment to the laws of the state proves to be his mistake. Finally, convinced by Teiresias' warnings, Creon decides to free Antigone from her isolated tomb. Unfortunately, it is too late and the consequences of his insolence towards divine laws were far worse than if he had “[L]ay[ed] [my] pride exposed to the blows of ruin” (1220). Creon's downfall can be seen as an allegory of the calamities that result when the laws of man try to defy the ancient laws of the gods..