Antigone, by Sophocles

Antigone is well known as the play that indicates that the Greeks understood the primacy of natural law over temporal laws enacted by governments.  Antigone is Oedipus’s elder daughter, who after burying her father, wishes to perform the burial rites for her brothers, both killed in the war.  The problem is that her uncle Creon has passed a law that prohibits anyone, from burying Polynices, her elder brother, seen as a traitor who made war against his own city. Antigone disobeys this law, on the grounds that the laws of the gods are more important than the laws of man, and suffers the consequences.  Like the other two plays, the narrative is simple and direct, the characters lifelike.