Thesis: Although the characters of Antigone and The Aeneid utilize the free will that they have to some extent, both plays show that mortals have no free will because their fate will ultimately end the same way.
In Antigone, King Creon issues an edict that forbids a proper burial for the traitor Polynices. Despite knowing the consequences of breaking this law, Polynices' sister and Creon' niece Antigone defiantly transgresses this law by giving her brother a proper burial ritual. Antigone shows that although she didn't necessarily escape her ultimate fate of death, she still utilized her free choice and free will to decide the outcomes of her actions. If she chose to obey her uncle's law, perhaps she wouldn't have died such a tragic death. However, since she chose to brazenly break this law because she thought it was disrespectful towards the gods, Antigone accepts that "even if she [dies] in the act, that death will be a glory" (63). Because Antigone goes against the establishment, she chooses to make a decision that is outside her destiny. Although she uses her free will to pick how she wanted to live her short life, in the end, her life ultimately ends in her death. At the end of the play when Antigone dies from hanging herself rather than starving from being shut in the cave, this also shows how Antigone took control of her life and didn't allow fate or nature to steer the course of her life.
In Creon's case, Antigone shows that Creon could have been in charge of his own fate if he had not succumbed to Tiresias' prophecy. If Creon had not allowed his hubris and unnecessary dedication to the state to enslave his individuality, the grim tragedy that occurs at the end of the play easily could have been avoided. My idea on how Creon fits in with free will isn't very built upon yet...
In The Aeneid, the character of Aeneas is portrayed as a character who does not have much free will or freedom in his life matters. His life is heartlessly and carelessly manipulated by the gods, and he is used as a pawn in the gods' fights and games. The beginning of the play starts off with divine mechanizations steer his journey--Aeolus' storm, Venus' intervention by giving Aeneas advice in disguise, and Jupiter's disclosing of Aeneas' ultimate destiny. However, it isn't until Book IV that we see the full limitations of Aeneas' free will. When Mercury tells Aeneas of his destiny, Aeneas automatically and fully accepts the fact that his destiny is what the gods say it is. He does not even have a second thought that perhaps a mortal like himself could create his own destiny and fate.
We learn very early on that Dido's fate is doomed as Sophocles wrote, “Dido does not know how great a god is taking hold of her poor self" (25). Dido falls in love with Aeneus because of Cupid, not because of her own free will. We don't know from the text whether Dido would have fallen in love with Aeneas otherwise. I think Dido's role in the play is to provide some kind of resistance to Aeneas' view that the gods create the mortals' destiny. She goes through any extent to try and persuade Aeneas to defy the gods' destiny for him and to stay. When she sees that she had failed in doing so, she kills herself. And in some sense, suicide is a way of taking "control" of one's life. Although Dido is still a pawn piece in the gods' manipulation, she is not manipulated so much as Aeneas is. Unlike Aeneas, Dido believes that Aeneas has the capability and free will to go against the gods' destiny and to create his own fate.
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