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Sophocles

Sophocles confronts the collision between lawful authority and the claims of conscience. By dramatizing the cost of obedience when law becomes unjust, he sharpened a permanent question for free societies—when, if ever, must moral duty stand against the commands of the state? In Antigone, Sophocles turns tragedy into an indictment of the state, opposing the laws of the gods to rulers who confuse authority with justice and showing that liberty perishes when power refuses to recognize any limit beyond itself.