Write a paragraph or two in response to the third choral ode in which you interpret it and relate it to the larger issues in the play.

The third choral ode in Sophocles's Antigone (chronologically the third of his Theban plays, but written first) is addressed to the abstract concept of love. The chorus (a hallmark and invention of Greek tragedy) is a unique representation of a unified body and so also of a shared opinion. The third choral ode states:

Love, unconquerable
Waster of rich men
Of warm lights and all-night vigil
In the soft face of a girl:
Sea-wanderer, forest-vistitor!
Even the pure immortals cannot escape you,
And mortal man, in his one day's dusk
Trembles before your glory.
Surely you swerve upon ruin
The just man's consenting heart
As here you have made bright anger
Strike between father and son--
And none has conquered but love!
A girl's glance working the will of heaven:
Pleasure to her alone who mock us
Merciless Aphrodite.

This ode constitutes the chorus's commentary on the request by Haemon (Antigone's lover and Creon's son) that Antigone's life be spared. In addition to highlighting love's capacity to affect mortals and immortals alike, the chorus obliquely sides here with Antigone, who "work[s] the will of heaven." With this ode, positioned as it is immediately following Haemon's argument with his father, the chorus suggests that love is the larger theme of the entire play.