“Not of today nor yesterday, but lives forever, and no one knows whence it came.”Sofocle · Antigona · -441 · versul 456
Power writes rules with expiry dates, but unwritten justice bears no signature and never expires.
Antigona sets these unwritten laws against Creon's decree, which has a publication date and a repeal date. Sophocles touches something essential about conscience: the deepest norms seem invented by no one but discovered, as if they had always been there. No one can say when the duty to bury one's family began, and no one can say it has expired. Political power makes rules, but it does not make everything that is right.
Why it matters It reminds someone that the legal and the moral do not always coincide, and conscience does not bow to a recent signature.