Creon

Creon is the brother of Jocasta and the king of Thebes whose decree against burying Polynices sends his niece Antigone to her death. In Sophocles' Antigone he becomes the ruler who sets the law of the city above the laws of the gods, and pays for it with his family.

A son of Menoeceus, Creon governs Thebes more than once when it has no king. After Laius is killed, he offers the throne and the hand of the widowed Jocasta to whoever rids the city of the Sphinx (Euripides, Apollodorus), and so Oedipus becomes king and his brother-in-law. In Sophocles' Oedipus the King he brings the oracle back from Delphi, is accused by Oedipus of plotting with Tiresias, and takes charge when the truth comes out. During the war of the Seven against Thebes, Tiresias declares that only the death of Creon's son Menoeceus will save the city; Creon tries to send him away, but the young man kills himself on the walls (Euripides, Phoenician Women). In Oedipus at Colonus he tries to drag the exiled Oedipus home by seizing Antigone and Ismene, until Theseus forces him to let them go.

When Eteocles and Polynices kill each other at the gates, Creon takes the throne, gives Eteocles a funeral and forbids anyone, on pain of death, to bury the traitor Polynices. Antigone defies him, and he has her shut alive in a tomb cut into the rock. Tiresias warns him that the gods are refusing the city's sacrifices because of the unburied corpse, and Creon's pride gives way, too late. Antigone has hanged herself, his son Haemon, her betrothed, kills himself beside her body, and his wife Eurydice takes her own life cursing him. Sophocles leaves him alive and broken.

Other authors give him a different end: in Euripides' Heracles he is murdered by the usurper Lycus, and in Statius' Thebaid Theseus kills him in battle when Athens marches to recover the Argive dead. Homer already names his daughter Megara as the wife of Heracles. He is not the same man as Creon of Corinth, the king in Euripides' Medea.