Unwritten Laws and Natural Law in Watson’s Antigone

Thomas Watson’s Antigone takes up the theme of the ‘unwritten laws’ present in the Sophoclean drama in the form of the ‘laws of nature’ and makes ‘nature’ a red thread in his translation-reworking of the Greek model. The natural law interpretation of Antigone’s laws has a long history that can be traced back to Aristotle (Rhetoric, Book I). In Sophocles’ play there is no reference to the fact that the protagonist of the play claims the rightness of her conduct by invoking nature and its laws. Watson’s reference point for his interpretation is probably the Latin version of Antigone by Thomas Naogeorgius (Basel 1558), who in a margin note explains the syntagm àpgrapta nòmima as “haud scriptas” or “naturae et cordibus inscriptas, non tabulis aut chartis”. The theme of nature and natural law is prominent in Watson’s interpretation, especially in the paratexts accompanying his Antigone edition, mainly in the second Argumentum and in the pomps, where nature is understood as the trait d’union between human and divine law.