The Sixth Episode, or Exodos, begins with a Messenger who tells the people the outcome of this tragedy--Haimon has killed himself and Creon is now a broken man. The manner in which the Messenger delivers this news takes the form of teaching a lesson to the people--they are to see that even the man who has everything may fall and be reduced to the state now facing Creon. In the older translation, the Messenger delivers his message as follow:
Creon was happy once, as I count happiness;
Victorious in battle, sole governor of the land,
Fortunate father of children nobly born.
And now it is all gone from him! (Fitts and Fitzgerald 912).
In the Wertenbaker version, the Messenger says that Creon was once a man to be envied, a man who saved his country from its enemies and then ruled that land:
When a man loses all that gave him joy I say that man is no longer alive. He's no more than a living corpse. Go on, gorge yourself with riches, live the life of tyrants, but I wouldn't give the shadow of smoke to any man for any of these things if there was no joy (Wertenbaker 54).
In both cases, the story of Creon is presented as a cautionary tale to shape the lives of others who would want to avoid his fate.
Eurydice emerges from the palace, appearing for the first time in the play only to hear the news of her son and husband. The Messenger tells her the details of what has happened, relating how he followed Creon to where the body of Polyneikes had been torn apart by dogs. Creon there washed the body and performed the religious rites that Antigone had wanted to perform and that Creon had forbidden. This action on the part of Creon proves that he has seen the error of his ways and that he is now prepared to fulfill the laws of the gods. Fulfilling those laws is so important that Creon performs this task for the dead rather than to see first to the living, and because of this the tragedy plays out and both Antigone an...