Antigone obeys a higher law

In what is perhaps the first recorded play, the subject is resistance to tyranny. 

Antigone wished to bury her dead brother Polinices, who had revolted against the state.  The ruler (and Antigone’s uncle) Creon was something of  tyrant, and he ordered the body to remain on the ground where dogs could eat it.  

Antigone disobeyed Creon and buried her brother, as was the Greek custom.  Creon was angered.

Creon [to Antigone]:  Now you, Answer this question.  Make your answer brief.  

You knew there was a law forbidding this?

Antigone:  Of course I knew it.  Why not?  It was public.

Creon:  And you have dared to disobey the law?

Antigone:  Yes.  For this law was not proclaimed by Zeus,

Or by the gods who rule the world below.

I do not think your edicts have such power

That they can override the laws of heaven,

Unwritten and unfailing laws whose life 

Belongs not to today or yesterday

But to time everlasting; and no man

Knows the first moment that they had their being.

Approximately 20 centuries later Jefferson said pretty much the same thing.   He didn’t mention Zeus, but he did mention that we were under the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.  It’s in the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.  

Trump and Vance and that whole crowd are not the highest law.  Remember that.

My copy of Sophocles’ Antigone was translated by Theodore Howard Banks.