Among the plays of Sophocles there were many, as titles and fragments show, of which the scene was laid at Troy, and of which the action was founded on the epics of the Trojan cycle. This series ranged over the whole course of the ten years' war, from its earliest incidents, as told in the , down to the fall of the city, as told in the The is connected with this series, but the is the only remaining piece which actually belongs to it. The story is taken from sources later than the , but the conception of the hero, though modified by that later legend, is fundamentally Homeric.

In the , Ajax, the son of Telamon, comes to Troy The Ajax of the from Salamis with twelve ships, and is stationed on the extreme left of the army, at the east end of the camp,—as Achilles holds the corresponding post of honour on the right 11. 7—9. . He is an independent chief,—subject only to the allegiance which all the chiefs owe to the Captain General, Agamemnon. There is no reference to his descent from Aeacus; nor is there anything that connects him especially with AthensIn the Catalogue only two verses are given to Ajax, 2. 557 f.:— Αἴας δ’ ἐκ Σαλαμῖνος ἄγεν δυοκαίδεκα νῆας· στῆσε δ’ ἄγων ἵν’ Ἀθηναίων ἵσταντο φάλαγγες . The second verse is absent from our best MSS., as it was from some of the editions known to Quintilian (5. 11 § 40). Aristotle ( I. 15 § 13) alludes to it as having been quoted by the Athenians in support of their claim to Salamis, and the interpolation must be at least as old as the date of their controversy with the Megarians (circ. 600—595 B.C.), whether the author was Solon or not. The Alexandrian critics rejected the verse, pointing out that Ajax, on the extreme left, had the Thessalians for his neighbours on the right ( 13. 681), while Odysseus, at the middle of the camp, was next to the Athenians ( 4. 329): Strabo 9. p. 394. Verse 557 may have been interpolated along with v. 558. If, however, it belonged to the genuine text, it must originally have been followed by more than one verse relating to Ajax, who was too important to be dismissed so curtly.. He has a well-recognised rank as being, next to Achilles, the greatest warrior in the Greek army 2. 768 ἀνδρῶν αὖ μέγ’ ἄριστος ἔην Τελαμώνιος Αἴας ὄφρ’ Ἀχιλεὺς μήνιεν . He holds the same rank in the (11. 468); with Alcaeus (fr. 48 τὸν ἄριστον πεδ’ Ἀχίλλεα); with Pindar ( 7. 27 κράτιστον Ἀχιλέος ἄτερ ); with Sophocles ( 1340); and in later literature ( Hor. 2. 3. 193 heros ab Achille secundus; Philostratus 719 f.; Dictys 4. 5, etc.).. Gigantic in stature—taller by a head and shoulders than his fellows—and of a massive frame, he is emphatically the ‘bulwark’ of the Greek host 3. 227 ἔξοχος Ἀργείων κεφαλήν τε καὶ εὐρέας ὤμους : 229 πελώριος, ἕρκος Ἀχαιῶν .. In comeliness, too, he is second only to the son of Peleus 17. 279. ; but ‘huge Ares’ is the god to whom he is compared; and when he is described ‘with a smile on his grim face,’ it is in the joy of battle 7. 208 σεύατ’ ἔπειθ’ οἷός τε πελώριος ἔρχεται Ἄρης : 212 μειδιόων βλοσυροῖσι προσώπασι .. The Homeric poet illustrates the qualities of his valour—both impetuous and obstinate—by likening him, first, to a lion in his onset, and then, when he is forced back by superior numbers, to a stubborn ass, whom boys, with feeble but incessant blows, laboriously cudgel out of a cornfield 11. 548-562.. Staunch and steadfast, he never fails his friends at need —whether it be some individual comrade, such as his half-brother Teucer, whom he protects 8. 266, etc., or whether he comes to the rescue of the whole army at some crisisAs in the battle at the ships, when he wounds Hector ( 14. 409 ff.); or in the fight over the body of Patroclus (17. 281 ff.).. In the absence of Achilles, it is only Ajax who is a match for HectorThe Greek chiefs rejoice when it falls to the lot of Ajax to meet Hector in single combat ( 7. 182).. The sevenfold shieldMade of seven layers of bull's hide, with a layer of metal nailed on the top,— χἁλκεον, ἑπταβόειον—as described in 7. 219-223. of Ajax is not only his characteristic attribute, but the symbol of his service,—great in attack, but especially signal in defence: and as the mighty shield is compared in the to a tower, so its owner himself is elsewhere called ‘a tower of strength’ to the Achaeans 7. 219 φέρων σάκος ἠΰτε πύργον : 11. 556 (of ajax) τοῖος γάρ σφιν πύργος ἀπώλεο ..

The Athena of Sophocles speaks of Ajax as pre-eminent not only for bravery but for prudence v. 119 τούτου τίς ἄν σοι τἀνδρὸς ἢ προνούστερος, ἢ δρᾶν ἀμείνων ηὑρέθη τὰ καίρια; . This is true to the picture of him in the Once, indeed, after he has uttered a defiant and menacing challenge, Hector calls him ‘a blunderer, a clumsy braggart 13. 824 Αἶαν ἁμαρτοεπές, βουγάϊε .’; as, in Shakespeare, Thersites calls him a ‘beef-witted lord,’ and Ulysses, ‘the lubber Ajax , 2. 1. 12, 3. 3. 139..’ In another place, however,—when he agrees, at the herald's suggestion, to break off his combat with Hector, though he was having the best of it,—his chivalrous opponent recognises Ajax as one to whom the gods have given, not only ‘stature and might,’ but ‘understanding 7. 288 Αἶαν, ἐπεί τοι δῶκε θεὸς μέγεθός τε βίην τε καὶ πινυτήν ..’ His good sense is conspicuous in the embassy to Achilles, where he is the colleague of Odysseus and Phoenix. It is he who perceives when the moment has come for ceasing to press the inexorable hero. ‘Let us go hence; for I do not think that the end of our message can be gained by this mission.’ He points out to his companions that it seems hopeless to move Achilles at present: and then, turning to Achilles himself, he addresses him in words of frank reproach, but also of friendly appeal and of cordial good-will 9. 624-642..

One trait, however, marks an important difference between the Homeric and the later conception. In the play of Sophocles Ajax appears as one who has offended Athena by the presumptuous self-confidence with which he has rejected divine aid in war. There is no trace of this in the While he is arming for the combat with Hector, he exhorts the Greeks to pray that Zeus may help him 7. 193 ff.. In the battle at the ships, after splendid deeds of valour, he retreats when he perceives, with a thrill of awe, that, for the time, the gods are against him 16. 119 γνῶ δ’ Αἴας κατὰ θυμὸν ἀμύμονα ῥίγησέν τε ἔργα θεῶν .. During the battle over the body of Patroclus, when a thick mist has fallen on the field, his prayer for light breathes reverent submission to the will of Zeus 17. 645 ff..

Such is the Ajax of the ; a mighty champion of the Greeks in their sorest need; a man of good sense and good feeling, sparing of words, but able to speak wisely in season; loyal to his friends; straightforward and unselfish; frankly conscious of his strength, but placing his reliance on the help of the gods, and yielding, even in the fiercest struggle, to revelations of their mind.

A contest between Ajax and Odysseus for the arms of Achilles, resulting in the defeat and suicide of Ajax, is first mentioned in the 11. 543-547: οἴη δ’ Αἴαντος ψυχὴ Τελαμωνιάδαο νόσφιν ἀφεστήκει, κεχολωμένη εἵνεκα νίκης τήν μιν ἐγὼ νίκησα δικαζόμενος παρὰ νῃυσὶ τεύχεσιν ἀμφ’ Ἀχιλῆος· ἔθηκε δὲ πότνια μήτηρ, παῖδες δὲ Τρώων δίκασαν καὶ Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη . On the last verse (547) the schol. (H) says, ἀθετεῖ Ἀρίσταρχος. It is not known on what grounds he rejected it; whether because the verse was absent from some copies; or because it conflicted with some other version of the matter which he regarded as having better authority; or for both reasons. The context itself affords no reason for suspecting this particular verse; on the contrary, the mention of the person who proposed the prize (ἔθηκε) is most naturally followed by a mention of the persons who made the award; and the passage would be maimed by the omission. W. Christ holds that Aristarchus was mistaken in condemning verse 547, and that it represents an early version of the story, probably that given by Arctînus in the ( 1881 p. 444): see also Kirchhoff ( p. 231); and K. F. Ameis ad loc. The whole passage relating to the contest of the arms may, no doubt, be later than other parts of the Νέκυια., where the sullen shade of the injured hero refuses to hold converse with the victor. It was the goddess Thetis who set her son's arms for a prize; ‘the judges were the children of the Trojans and Pallas Athena.’

The whole passage Cyclic epics. The evidently presupposes some well-known work or works in which the contest for the arms had been related more at length. The scholiast says that ‘the story comes from the Cyclic poetsSchol. H on 11. 547 ἡ δὲ ἱστορία ἐκ τῶν κυκλικῶν..’ There are two poems, and two only, which are known to have contained that story. One is the , by Arctînus of Miletus, which may be placed about 776 B.C. The other is the , which in later antiquity was commonly (though not universally) ascribed to LeschesAs Carl Robert has pointed out in (‘Arktinos und Lesches,’ pp. 222 ff.), the claim of Lesches is subject to much doubt. Hellanicus, himself a Lesbian, attributed the to Cinaethon of Lacedaemon, according to the scholiast on Eur. 821; where Thestorides of Phocis and Diodorus of Erythrae are mentioned as other writers to whom the poem had been attributed—while Lesches is not even named. The scholiast probably derived this statement from the Alexandrian Lysimachus, a learned mythographer, whose work entitled Νόστοι is often quoted., of Pyrrha, near Mitylene, and of which the approximate date is 700 B.C.

In the , which contained the death of Achilles, Ajax played a foremost part in rescuing the corpse from the Trojans— an episode imitated from the fight over the body of Patroclus in the As to the manner in which Arctînus conceived the contest for the arms, only two details are known. (1) After the award, Podaleirius—the physician, skilled in diagnosis of obscure ailments, as his brother Machaon was the great surgeon—perceived a fierce light in the eyes of Ajax, and a weight upon his spirit, which were the precursors of the end:—

ὅς ῥα καὶ Αἴαντος πρῶτος μάθε χωομένοιο ὄμματά τ’ ἀστράπτοντα βαρυνόμενόν τε νόημα Schol. 11. 515(referring to the skill of Machaon in surgery): τοῦτο ἔοικε καὶ Ἀρκτῖνος ἐν Ἰλίου πορθήσει νομίζειν ἐν οἷς φησιν [here he quotes eight verses from Arctînus, on the skill of Machaon and Podaleirius respectively, ending with the two verses given above]. Arctînus was the author of two poems: (1) the Αἰθιοπίς, which ended with the contest between Ajax and Odysseus for the arms: (2) the Ἰλίου πέρσις, which (like the ) probably included the healing of Philoctetes. The scholiast quotes these verses as being ἐν Ἰλίου πορθήσει. It has been supposed that they occurred in connection with the contest for the arms, and that therefore the scholiast ought to have said ἐν Αἰθιοπίδι. But it is also possible that the scholiast is right—that the verses came from the , and had to do with the healing of Philoctetes. Certainly, as Mr Monro has remarked ( vol. v. p. 29), ‘the two lines about Ajax have rather the appearance of a parenthesis.’ If, however, the skill of Podaleirius was thus illustrated by a glance backward at the insight which he had formerly shown with regard to Ajax, we can scarcely avoid supposing that in the , when the contest for the arms was being related, this observation by Podaleirius had already been mentioned. The parenthesis would be clumsy and out of place, if the fact was being noticed for the first time. Indeed, such an allusion might well suggest the inference that in the the contest for the arms, and the effect of his defeat upon Ajax, were described with some fulness.. (2) Arctînus described Ajax as killing himself ‘about dawnSchol. Pind. 4.(3.) 58 ὁ γὰρ τὴν Αἰθιοπίδα γράφων περὶ τὸν ὄρθρον φησὶ τὸν Αἴαντα ἑαυτὸν ἀνελεῖν.’— doubtless on the morning after the award. There is no reason to think that Arctînus mentioned that delusion of Ajax by Athena which caused his slaughter of the cattle. The scanty evidence rather suggests that the rage in the hero's soul was not expressed in any deed of violence, but that he passed in seclusion, perhaps within his tent, the few hours of darkness between his defeat and his deathWe have just seen that, according to Arctînus, it was the acute physician Podaleirius who ‘first’ detected the symptoms of anger and deep mental trouble in Ajax. This clearly implies that Ajax, though with rage in his soul, retained his self-command. What the physician was ‘the first’ to see, others saw only in the light of the tragic event—the hero's suicide, which so quickly ensued. So, at least, I understand the force of πρῶτος μάθε. The antithesis might be, of course, with the later perception caused in others by an outbreak of fury on the part of Ajax: but, in connection with the fact that he was here represented as dying almost immediately after the award, this seems less probable.. It is highly probable that the older and simpler form of the Ajax-myth knew nothing of his insane onslaught on the cattle, by which Athena averted his vengeance from the Greek chiefs. The motive of his suicide, in this older version, seems to have been simply resentment at the award— not that feeling combined with a sense of disgrace incurred by his own action. Such is certainly the impression given by the passage in the 11. 543 ff.: not merely because it is silent respecting madness and outrage, but because it implies (556 f.) that Ajax had died, like Achilles, in unclouded renown —without having done anything to offend the Greeks, who in the play of Sophocles (v. 726) threaten to stone Teucer, as ‘the kinsman of the maniac, the plotter against the host.’. It is given also by Pindar, when he says, ‘The Danaoi paid court to Odysseus by secret votes, and Ajax, robbed of the golden arms, wrestled with death 8. 26 f. Precisely the same impression—that the suicide was the immediate consequence of the award—is conveyed in 7. 25, οὔ κεν ὅπλων χολωθεὶς ὁ καρτερὸς Αἴας ἔπαξε διὰ φρενῶν λευρὸν ξίφος . Eustathius (p. 1698. 51), in commenting on 11. 543 ff., thus closes his paraphrase of the account given by some ‘others’ (who probably include Arctînus)—καὶ εὐθὺς Ὀδυσσεὺς μὲν ἔλαβε τὰ ὅπλα, Αἴας δὲ ἀπῆλθε [ἀπέθανε?] ξίφει πεσών ..’ Pindar agrees with Arctînus in saying that Ajax died about dawn—a coincidence which can hardly be accidental 3. 53 ὀψίᾳ | ἐν νυκτί , i.e. ‘at the end of the night,’=περὶ ὄρθρον (see above, note 1)..

There is another point, however, in which it seems probable that they diverged. According to Pindar, the Greek chiefs were the judges in the contest for the arms. This account, which Sophocles follows, is fitted to win sympathy for Ajax, who appears as a victim of jealousy and of ingratitude on the part of men who had the best reason to know that he was second only to Achilles. But the testifies to that other version according to which the judges were ‘the children of the Trojans and Pallas Athena.’ The words of the scholiastSchol. H on 11. 547.Eustathius (p. 1698) cannot, I think, be regarded as a witness of independent authority on this point, though that has sometimes been assumed. Commenting on παῖδες δὲ Τρώων δίκασαν, he says:—ἰστέον δὲ ὅτι (1) οἱ μὲν ἁπλοϊκώτερόν φασι Τρῶας καὶ Ἀθηνᾶν δικάσαι Ὀδυσσεῖ καὶ Αἴαντι περὶ τῶν Ἀχιλλέως ὅπλων ἐρίζουσι, καὶ δὴ καὶ Κόϊντος [ Quint. Smyrn. 5. 128 ff.] διασκευάζει ἐν τοῖς αὑτοῦ τὴν δίκην ῥητορικῶς. (2) ἕτεροι δέ φασιν ὅτι ἐπίτηδες Ἀγαμέμνων φυλαττόμενος τὸ δόξαι θατέρῳ τῶν ἡρώων χαρίσασθαι, αἰχμαλώτους τῶν Τρώων συναγαγών, ἤρετο κ.τ.λ. Here he is repeating, partly verbatim, Schol. H on Hom. 11. 547, to which he adds nothing new. Thus he distinguishes two versions. (1) That in which the judges are simply ‘the Trojans,’ with Athena—as in the He names Quintus Smyrnaeus in connection with this version—and for a reason which can, I think, be perceived; Quintus makes Nestor say, τοὔνεκα Τρωσὶν ἐφῶμεν ἐΰφροσι τήνδε δικάσσαι κ.τ.λ. (5. 157). Eustathius noticed or remembered this,—but not that, by Τρωσίν, the Nestor of Quintus meant the Trojan prisoners in the camp (as he presently explains, v. 160). (2) The version given by ‘others’ (ἕτεροι)—in which the Trojan prisoners judged— was manifestly known to Eustathius only from the scholium on the , which he reproduces. there deserve attention:—‘The story is from the Cyclic poets. Agamemnon, on his guard against seeming to favour either of the competitors for the arms of Achilles, brought some Trojan prisoners, and asked them by which of the two heroes they had been more injured,’ etc. There is no reason to doubt that the scholiast knew of this account as given in some poem (or poems) of the Epic Cycle. There is no warrant for assuming that he invented this statement to explain the verse on which he was commenting. But the and the are, so far as we know, the only Cyclic poems to which his allusion could refer. And in the the award of the arms was decided, not by Trojan prisoners in the Greek camp, but (as will be seen presently) by Trojan opinion reported from Troy itself. Presumably, then, it was in the that the Trojan prisoners acted as judges. Since that poem dated from the earlier part of the eighth century (circ. 776 B.C.), the verse in the Nekyia of the , παῖδες δὲ Τρώων δίκασαν καὶ Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη, may have been founded upon it. The Nekyia is, in great part, older, probably, than 800 B.C., but unquestionably received some additions in the course of the eighth and seventh centuries. It is not necessary, however, to suppose that the Nekyia was here indebted to the Both may have used some older source now unknown. When the Homeric poet associates ‘Pallas Athena’ with the Trojan judges, he need not be understood as conceiving that she actually presided over the award,—as in the she presides at the first session of the Areiopagus,—but merely that she influenced the minds of the arbiters.

The author of the seems The to have worked in a spirit quite different from that of Arctînus. The was a grave epic, more in the temper of the ; while the other poem had more affinity to the , more of the lighter Ionian vein, and a larger element of romance. The contest for the arms was managed in a way which indicates the desire to avoid imitation of some earlier poet who had referred the award to the Trojan captives. By Nestor's advice, the Greeks send spies to the walls of Troy, in the hope that they may overhear some Trojan comments on the rival Greek heroes. The spies are fortunate. At that very moment two Trojan maidens are discussing Ajax and Odysseus. One of them deems Ajax the braver, since he carried the corpse of Achilles out of the fray. The other, inspired by Athena, reproves her;—‘even a woman can bear a burden, when it is laid on her,—but she cannot fight’; —and added, doubtless, that it was Odysseus who had protected the retreat. The Greek chiefs, on hearing the report of their messengers, adjudged the arms to OdysseusSchol. on Ar. 1056.The first maiden said, Αἴας μὲν γὰρ ἄειρε καὶ ἔκφερε δηϊοτῆτος ἥρω Πηλείδην, οὐδ’ ἤθελε δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς· The second answered (Ἀθηνᾶς προνοίᾳ): πῶς ἐπεφωνήσω; πῶς οὐ κατὰ κόσμον ἔειπες; καί κε γυνὴ φέροι ἄχθος, ἐπεί κεν ἀνὴρ ἐπιθείη· ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἂν μαχέσαιτο. The last line and a half are in the text of Aristophanes. The scholiast designates the author as ὁ τὴν μικρὰν Ἰλιάδα πεποιηκώς.. Ajax, stricken with frenzy, made the onslaught on the flocks and herds of the Greeks: and afterwards slew himselfProclus, in his abstract of the (Photius cod. 239): ἡ τῶν ὅπλων κρίσις γίνεται, καὶ Ὀδυσσεὺς κατὰ βούλησιν Ἀθηνᾶς λαμβάνει, Αἴας δὲ ἐμμανὴς γενόμενος τήν τε λείαν Ἀχαιῶν λυμαίνεται καὶ ἑαυτὸν ἀναιρεῖ .. Agamemnon, probably by the counsel of the seer Calchas, decreed that the body of Ajax should not receive the customary form of funeral— i.e., should not be burned, but should be placed in a coffin, and interredEustathius on 2. 557(p. 285): ὁ τὴν μικρὰν Ἰλιάδα γράψας ἱστορεῖ μηδὲ καυθῆναι συνήθως τὸν Αἴαντα, τεθῆναι δὲ οὕτως ἐν σορῷ, διὰ τὴν ὀργὴν τοῦ βασιλέως. The intervention of Calchas is mentioned by Philostratus 11. 3.. Here, then, we have two traits which are distinctive of the story as handled by Sophocles, the onslaught of the mad Ajax on the cattle, and the idea that, after his death, his body was liable to be treated with some degree of penal dishonour. Both these traits, so far as can now be judged, were peculiar to the In the other version—that indicated in the and by Pindar, and probably given by Arctînus—Ajax died guiltless of offence against the Greeks, and received, like Achilles, the spontaneous and uncontested tribute of public mourning.

Before the age of the Attic dramatists, the Ajax Ajax and the Aeacidae. legend received some further developments which were probably unknown to the Cyclic poets. One of these was the enrolment of Ajax among the Aeacidae. The bestows the name of Αἰακίδης on two persons only,—Peleus, the son, and Achilles, the grandson, of Aeacus. The logographer Pherecydes Apollod. 3. 12.§ 6. (circ. 480 B.C.) made Telamon the son of Actaeus and Glaucè, a daughter of the Aeginetan hero Cychreus,—recognising no tie, except friendship, between Telamon and Peleus. According to another legend, however, both Peleus and Telamon were sons of Aeacus by Endeïs Apollod. l.c. This Ἐνδηΐς appears in Megarian legend as a daughter of Σκείρων or Σκίρων of Megara ( Paus. 2. 29. 9; Plut. 10). Another legend makes her a daughter of Cheiron (schol. Pind. 5. 12: schol. 16. 14: Hyginus 14). In Apollod. l.c. the MSS. have Ἐνδηΐδα τὴν Σκείρωνος: but Aegius in his edition (Rome, 1555) gave Χείρωνος, which Heyne (ed. 1803) retained. (Ἐνδηΐς=ἔγγαιος or ἔγγειος, from the Doric δᾶ=γῆ). The cult of Aeacus, son of Zeus, had its chief seat in the island called after his mother, the nymph Aegina. Telamon and Ajax belonged to Salamis. By making Telamon and Peleus brothers, the Aeginetans linked their local hero with the others. This engrafting of Telamon and his son on the Aeacid stock had gained general acceptance before the fifth century B.C. The sculptures of Athena's temple at Aegina date from the period of the Persian wars. On the east pediment Heracles and Telamon were the prominent figures; on the west, Ajax was seen defending the corpse of Achilles. Herodotus8. 64 ἔδοξε δέ σφι εὔξασθαι τοῖσι θεοῖσι καὶ ἐπικαλέσασθαι τοὺς Αἰακίδας συμμάχους, ὡς δέ σφι ἔδοξε,...αὐτόθεν μὲν ἐκ Σαλαμῖνος Αἴαντά τε καὶ Τελαμῶνα ἐπεκαλέοντο, ἐπὶ δὲ Αἰακὸν καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους Αἰακίδας νέα ἀπέστελλον ἐς Αἴγιναν. It has generally been supposed that the ship sent to Aegina was intended to bring sacred images or symbols of the Aeacidae (so CurtiusE. , II. p. 291 Eng. tr.). Stein, however, thinks that the object was merely to make the invocation at Aegina in the proper form; and would similarly explain the presence of the Dioscuri with the Spartan armies ( Her. 5. 75) in a purely spiritual sense.—After the victory, three Phoenician triremes were dedicated by the Greeks to deities who had helped them— one to Poseidon at the Isthmus, one to Athena at Sunium, and one to Ajax at Salamis ( Her. 8. 121). says that when the Greeks had resolved, just before the battle of Salamis, ‘to invoke the Aeacidae as allies,’ they called on Ajax and Telamon to come to them from Salamis itself, but sent a ship to Aegina to summon ‘Aeacus and the other Aeacidae’ (i.e., Peleus, and his son Achilles; Phocus, and his sons Crisus and Panopeus). The passage has an especial interest as showing that, though Ajax had now been thoroughly adopted into the Aeacid cult of Aegina, this had been done without weakening the immemorial tradition which made Salamis his home.

Another addition Ajax invulnerable.to the Ajax legend—worthy of notice, since Aeschylus used it—is that which made the hero invulnerable. This was borrowed from the story of Achilles,— which, indeed, influenced at several points the later development of the Ajax-myth: and it served also to connect Ajax with Heracles. In Pindar's fifth Isthmian ode, Heracles, the guest of Telamon at Salamis, prays that his host may have a son, as ‘staunch of frame’ as the hide of the Nemean lion which he himself is wearing 5. 47 ἄρρηκτον φυάν, ὥσπερ τόδε δέρμα με νῦν περιπλανᾶται | θηρός.. From some such germ grew the story that Ajax had been born before the arrival of Heracles, who wrapped the child in the lion-skin, making him invulnerable, except in one place which the hide had not coveredTzetzes on Lycophron 455—461. Argument to Soph. (ad fin.), and schol. on v. 833.. This legend is unknown to the Thus in 23. 822 the Greeks fear that Ajax may be wounded by Diomedes.; but in Plato's time it was generally current Plat. 219 E (χρήμ<*>) πολὺ μᾶλλον ἄτρωτος ἦν πανταχῇ (sc. ὁ Σωκράτης) ἢ σιδήρῳ ὁ Αἴας..

Aeschylus handled the story of Ajax in a trilogy. The The trilogy of Aeschylus. (i) Ὅπλων κρίσις. first play was called Ὅπλων κρίσις, the Aristotle includes this title (without naming Aeschylus) in a list of ten tragedies of which the subjects were taken from the c. 23 ad fin. . It would be unsafe to found too much upon this notice. Aristotle may have meant, not a particular tragedy entitled Ὅπλων κρίσις, but, more generally, that episode, as a tragic subject; thus the contest for the arms was certainly included in the of Theodectes, to which Aristotle more than once alludes in the (see below, § 19). We cannot assume, then, that the version given in the was that which Aeschylus followed. Welcker , in for 1829, part 3, p. 53. thinks that Aeschylus, following the of Arctînus, made the Trojan captives the judges, and omitted the onslaught of Ajax on the cattle. As to the judges, it is obvious that tragedy could not use the almost playful romance of the , and represent the question as decided by the conversation between the Trojan maidens. One of Welcker's chief reasons for thinking that the captives formed the tribunal is that the Ὅπλων κρίσις had a second title, namely, Φρύγες,—these ‘Phrygians’ being the Trojan captives who acted as judges: but this hypothesis as to the second title has no good foundationNo such second title appears in any one of the five ancient citations of the Οπλων κρίσις (Nauck, , pp. 57 f.).. On this point, then, we must be content to remark that the Trojans appear as the judges not only in the , but also in the of Philostratus, in Quintus Smyrnaeus, and in the of Tzetzes 11. 3: Quint. Smyrn. 5. 157: Tzetzes 485.. Now, after the age of Attic tragedy, the of Arctînus, like other Cyclic epics, fell into comparative obscurity, so much of the material having been worked up in the more attractive form of drama. The earliest writer, of known dateThe scholia which name or indicate Arctînus, such as those on 11. 515 and Pind. 4.(3.) 58, may, of course, be older, or represent older sources., who names Arctînus, is Dionysius of Halicarnassus (circ. 25 B.C.) 1. 68.. It would seem that neither Strabo nor Pausanias knew the As to Strabo, see Mr Monro in IV. p. 16, n. 1; as to Pausanias, ib. p. 31, n. 1.. When, therefore, Philostratus (circ. 235 A.D. ), or Quintus Smyrnaeus (circ. 450 A.D. ), represents the Trojan captives as the judges, it is much less probable that he derived that version from Arctînus than that he found it in some old writer of wider popularity, such as Aeschylus. It is, of course, a bare possibility that these late writers relied solely on the verse in the ; but it is very unlikely. I think, therefore, that Welcker's view on this point has much in its favour, although the ground on which he chiefly rests it (the supposed second title of the play) is untenable. With regard to the general treatment of the subject by Aeschylus, one important fact is certain. Ajax and Odysseus argued their respective claims in speechesThis is proved by a fragment of the Ὅπλων κρίσις ( Aesch. frag. 175, ed. Nauck), manifestly from a speech of Ajax, who taunts Odysseus with being the son of Sisyphus: ἀλλ’ Ἀντικλείας ἆσσον ἦλθε Σίσυφος, τῆς σῆς λέγω τοι μητρὸς ἥ σ’ ἐγείνατο.—as they do in Ovid and Quintus Smyrnaeus, and as we know that they did in Theodectes. It may perhaps jar somewhat on our conception of Aeschylus—whose style, as we know it, is so remote from rhetoric of the kind which afterwards became popular at Athens —to imagine him pitting his two heroes against each other in controversial speeches; but there is the trial-scene in the to remind us how he could treat a subject of the forensic type without loss of tragic and heroic elevation. The pleading of his Ajax and his Odysseus had probably more resemblance to a controversy in the than to such an encounter of wits as Euripides would have provided on a similar occasion.

The second play of the trilogy was the Θρῇσσαι. These (ii) Θρῇσσαι. Thracian women, who formed the Chorus, were captives of Ajax. Tecmessa, in Quintus Smyrnaeus, says that her lord had carried her away from her home, ‘along with other women, prizes of war Quint. Smyrn. 5. 541 ἅμ’ ἄλλῃς ληϊάδεσσι..’ The function of this Chorus was similar to that of the Salaminian sailors in Sophocles, to express reverence for Ajax, to mourn with him in his unjust defeat, and especially to sympathise with Tecmessa, a captive like themselves, and one whose lot was to be reduced, by the hero's death, to a level with their ownThe ancient scholiast on Soph. 134, after commending Sophocles for forming his Chorus of Salaminians, observes:—τὸ δὲ τῶν αἰχμαλώτων κηδεμονικὸν μέν, ὡς Αἰσχύλος ἐν Θρῄσσαις, οὐ μὴν εὐπρόσωπον· ὅρα γὰρ οἷον αἰχμαλώτους ἐπιτιμᾶν τῷ Μενελάῳ. He means that the condition of the captives is well suited to the expression of sympathy ( κηδεμονικόν), but not, on the whole, suited to their part (εὐπρόσωπον): for it is unseemly that captives should censure Menelaüs. Hence we learn that the Chorus in the Θρῇσσαι denounced the part taken by the Atreidae in the award of the arms.. The suicide of Ajax was related by a messengerSchol. on Soph. 815 φθάνει Αἰσχύλος ἐν Θρῄσσαις τὴν ἀναίρεσιν Αἴαντος δἰ ἀγγέλου ἀπαγγείλας.. Aeschylus adopted the legend already mentioned—that Ajax was invulnerable, except at one place (in the side, according to one account), which the lion-hide of Heracles had not covered. The messenger told how, when Ajax first attempted to slay himself, the sword bent against his body, ‘as when a man bends a bow.’ But anon a divine being came to him: she it was who showed him the place at which he must drive in the swordSchol. on Soph. 833 φησὶ δὲ περὶ αὐτοῦ Αἰσχύλος ὅτι καὶ τὸ ξίφος ἐκάμπτετο οὐδαμῇ ἐνδιδόντος τοῦ χρωτὸς τῇ σφαγῇ τόξον ὥς τις ἐντείνων πρὶν δή τις, φησί, παροῦσα δαίμων ἔδειξεν αὐτῷ κατὰ ποῖον μέρος δεῖ χρήσασθαι τῇ σφαγῇ.. The simple fact that the suicide of Ajax was narrated by an eye-witness, who could describe the circumstances attending it, at once indicates how profoundly Aeschylus must have differed from Sophocles in his treatment of this subject. In the psychology of Ajax, as delineated by Sophocles, we can trace the growth of those complex feelings which imperiously required that his deed should be done in complete security from the witness of human eye or ear, so that he might be alone with his deliberate thoughts, and with the gods to whom he speaks them.

The place (iii) Σαλαμίνιαι.of the Σαλαμίνιαι as the third play of this trilogy, and the nature of the subject, may be considered certainThey were first recognised by Welcker: see (1829) pp. 56 ff. It is known from Ar. 1041 that ‘lion-hearted Teucer’ figured prominently in some work of Aeschylus,—an allusion which can hardly refer to any subordinate part that he may have borne in the Ὅπλων κρίσις or the Θρῇσσαι. And, except the Σαλαμίνιαι, no lost play of Aeschylus is known by name in which Teucer could have been a principal person.. After the death of Ajax, Teucer returns to Salamis, bringing with him the child Eurysaces (confided to his care by Ajax); he is met with reproaches by his father, the aged and lonely Telamon, who blames him for the death of Ajax; and goes forth to found the new Salamis in Cyprus. With regard to the ‘Salaminian women’—the Chorus who gave the title to the play—it is well to remember that, when the protagonist of a Greek play is a man (as Teucer here), but the Chorus female, this regularly denotes that a woman has some important, though secondary, part in the action; as Creüsa, for example, in the , where the Chorus is formed by her handmaids. The ‘Salaminian women’ stood (we may conjecture) in a like relation to Eriboea, the mother of Ajax. In the play of Sophocles the Salaminian sailors imagine the passionate grief with which she will hear the evil tidings of her son; and Ajax vividly expresses the same foreboding. Itis very possible (I think) that these passages were suggested by the prominent place which the laments of Eriboea and her handmaids held in the Both these passages in the have a noteworthy emphasis. (1) In the first, vv. 622—634, the Salaminian sailors dwell on Eriboea's grief, which they are merely predicting, at a length, and with a degree of detail, which arrest attention. (2) In vv. 850 f., Ajax, after briefly mentioning both his parents, goes on to speak of the manner in which his mother's sorrow will be manifested. The Αἰάντεια of Aeschylus was probably one of his earlier trilogies—written, perhaps, while the new lustre shed on Ajax by the victory at Salamis was still fresh. In that case, the lyric element in the Σαλαμίνιαι may have been very large, giving ample scope for κομμοί between Eriboea and the Chorus.. ‘The island of Ajax,’ as Aeschylus calls Salamis, had a cult of the hero, including an annual festival (Αἰάντεια); and an impressive conclusion would be given to the trilogy by Telamon decreeing honours to the memory of his son.

The award of the arms was not dramatised by Sophocles. The of Sophocles. In his he assumes, like Pindar, that the award was decided by the Greek chiefs. For the rest, the outline of his plot is taken from the

The scene is laid before the tent of Ajax, at the eastern end Analysis of the play. I. Prologue: 1—133. of the Greek camp, on the northern coast of the Troad. The time is early morning. Odysseus is scanning foot-prints on the ground,—walking to and fro as he does so, in perplexity. The goddess Athena (who is invisible, probably, to him, though seen by the spectators) speaks to him, and tells him that she can resolve his doubts. Ajax, whom he seeks, is within yonder tent. And Ajax has really done the outrage of which he is suspected: it is he who, in the past night, butchered the oxen and sheep of the Greeks, along with the men in charge of them. His plan had been to murder the Greek chiefs, beginning with the Atreidae; but, just as he had reached their tents, Athena struck him with frenzy, and turned his rage aside upon the cattle. At this moment he is tormenting some of the animals in his tent, fancying that they are the Greek princes. And she will show him to Odysseus. She then calls Ajax to come forth. Odysseus is alarmed at the prospect of being confronted with this raging madman: but the goddess reassures him; the maniac shall not see him.

Then Ajax comes out, with a blood-stained scourge in his hand, and boasts, with wild laughter, of his triumphs. He has killed the Atreidae, and now he is going to flog Odysseus to death. When he returns to his task, Athena reads the moral to her favourite. Let him beware of sinning, through pride, against the gods, as Ajax has done. ‘A day can humble all human things, and a day can lift them up; but the wise of heart are loved of the gods, and the evil are abhorred.’ Athena then disappears; and Odysseus departs.

The Chorus of Salaminians, followers of Ajax,—at once Parodos: 134—200. sailors and warriors,—now enter. They have heard the rumour that Ajax is the author of the onslaught on the cattle, and are keenly disquieted. If the deed has really been his, he must have been driven to it by some angry deity who demented him. But they rather believe that it is a slander, prompted by the jealousy of the Greek chiefs. He has been too long secluded; let him arise, and clear his good name, which is theirs also.

At this moment II. First episode: 201—595. (First Kommos: 201—262.) Tecmessa comes to them from the tent. She tells them that Ajax has gone mad, and has been slaughtering cattle in the tent. Thus they learn that the worst is true. In the lyric dialogue (kommos) which follows, they learn further that the frenzy of Ajax is past; he is sane again, but is plunged in the deepest despondency. She has just finished a detailed account of what happened in the night—how her lord sallied forth, how he returned, and how, while tormenting his victims, he conversed with ‘some phantom’ at the tent-door—when Ajax himself is heard calling from within. She opens the door of the tent (i.e., the interior is disclosed by the eccyclema), and Ajax is seen sitting amidst the slaughtered cattle.

He cries (Second Kommos: 348—429.) to his trusty friends to slay him; he is disgraced, and has become a mockery to his foes: this shame has blotted out his past deeds. In vain the Chorus and Tecmessa try to comfort him. Each successive utterance makes it clearer that he can think of only one refuge. When at last he has said this plainly—reviewing the whole situation in which he finds himself, and reasoning out the conclusion that nothing remains for him but to die—Tecmessa makes her appeal. Let him think what his death will mean for her and for his child. His only reply is to command that the boy shall be brought to him. This is done; and the touching words which he then speaks (incidentally showing his affection for Tecmessa) are words of farewell. He charges the Chorus with his last injunctions for Teucer, who is to see that his armour is buried with him,—saving only the shield which his son Eurysaces (who takes his name from it) is to keep. And Teucer shall take Eurysaces home to Telamon and Eriboea in Salamis.—He then sternly commands Tecmessa to retire, with the child. She addresses him with despairing entreaties; but he roughly silences her, and withdraws into the tent.

The Chorus, First stasimon: 596—645. whose thoughts turn wistfully to Salamis, lament how their hard lot at Troy is now aggravated by this new and dread affliction of their lord. They deplore his cruel fate, and imagine the grief of his aged parents. His plight is indeed such that death might well seem a lesser evil.

Ajax re-enters, with a sword in his hand. He had lately III. Second episode: 646—692. parted from his friends with an open and stern expression of his resolve to die. But now his first words announce at least a change of mood. Time can alter all things; and he has been softened. He is going ‘to purge his stains,’ and ‘to bury’ his sword. He wishes ‘to avoid’ the anger of Athena; and ‘henceforth’ he will know how to yield to the gods—and to revere the Atreidae. Perhaps they will soon hear that all is well with him.

A discussion of this speech will be found below (§ 12). Its Hyporcheme (serving as second stasimon): 693—718. effect is to throw the Chorus into a transport of joy, to which they give vent in song, accompanied by lively dance. So Ajax has been reconciled to the gods, and has forgiven the Atreidae! The trouble is overpast!

A Messenger enters from the Greek camp. Teucer has just IV. Third episode: 719—865. returned from a foray in the Mysian uplands. On his arrival, the infuriated Greeks had thronged around him, denouncing him as ‘the kinsman of the maniac,’ and threatening to stone him. Meanwhile the Greek chiefs had met in council before Agamemnon's tent. The seer Calchas, drawing apart from their circle, had given a private and friendly warning to Teucer. Ajax, he said, had incurred the anger of Athena, by proud words formerly spoken. But her anger will pursue him for this day only. If, during this day, he can be kept within the tent, his life may be saved.

On learning that Ajax has just gone out, the Messenger is filled with dismay, which the Chorus share. They call forth Tecmessa. On hearing what Calchas has said, she implores the Chorus at once to aid her in seeking Ajax. The Chorus now leave the orchestra, in two divisions. One division goes out on the left of the spectators, to search the coast eastward from the camp: the other goes out on the right, to search westwards. Tecmessa also goes forth, and the Messenger departs.

A change of scene now takes place—from the ground in front of the tent, to a lonely spot on the sea-shore, fringed with underwood. (The change of scene in the , from Delphi to Athens, is the only other certain instance in Greek Tragedy.)

Ajax is seen standing near the sword which he has fixed by its hilt in the ground. He invokes Zeus—to save his corpse from dishonour, by apprising Teucer: Hermes—to give him swift convoy to the nether world: the Furies—to avenge him on the Greeks: Helios—to tell the news in his island-home: Thanatos—to release him. Then he bids farewell to Salamis, to Athens, to the springs, rivers, and plains of Troy: and falls upon his sword.

The Chorus Epiparodos: 866—878. Third Kommos: 879—973. re-enter the orchestra in two bands (as they left it), from opposite sides. They do not see the body of Ajax, which is screened by the underwood amid which it fell. While deploring the failure of their search, they hear a sharp cry of anguish from the copse near them. It is Tecmessa, who has found what they sought. She will not suffer them to see what she has seen, but covers the body with a robe.

Amid the laments V. Fourth episode: 974— 1184. which follow, Teucer hastens in: Zeus had heard the prayer of Ajax; ‘a swift rumour, as from a god,’ had come to the brother. His first thought is for the child that Ajax had bequeathed to his care; and on learning that Eurysaces has been left at the tent, he sends Tecmessa to fetch him. He then unshrouds the corpse; his bitter grief has free course; and as he withdraws the sword from the body which it has transfixed, he remembers that it was Hector's fatal gift.

Menelaüs now enters, and roughly tells Teucer that the body of Ajax is to remain where it lies, unburied. Ajax was a worse than Trojan foe; he had plotted the murder of his comrades, who were saved only by divine interposition. Reverence for authority shall be upheld: Ajax defied the Atreidae while he lived, but they will dispose of him in death. Teucer replies to the second part of the indictment—the charge of insubordination. Ajax was an independent ally, not a vassal of the Atreidae. In the stormy altercation which follows, Menelaüs has the worst of it, and departs, with a hint that he can bring force to bear.

He has just gone, when Tecmessa comes, with the child Eurysaces, for whom Teucer had sent her to the tent. (Henceforth she is a mute person.) The child is now made to kneel, in the posture of a suppliant, by his father's body, holding in his hand locks of hair (his own, Tecmessa's, and Teucer's), as offerings to the dead. Teucer fears that Menelaüs may seek to separate the kinsfolk from the body of Ajax by force: he therefore places the body under this religious safeguard of a formal ‘supplication,’ and invokes a solemn curse on any one who may attempt to remove the suppliant by violence. He then goes out, to choose a place for the grave of Ajax.

The Chorus bewail their hardships at Troy. Ajax was once Third stasimon: 1185— 1222. their comfort, and they have lost him. Would that they could pass Sunium, and greet sacred Athens!

Teucer re-enters hurriedly, having noticed the approach of VI. Exodos: 1223— 1420. Agamemnon, who appears directly afterwards. Agamemnon reproves the presumption of Teucer (‘the captive woman's son’). What, after all, was this Ajax? ‘Whither went he, or where stood he, where I was not?’ Ajax lost the arms: that is no reason why Teucer should attack the judges. ‘Sober thyself, I say;—recall thy birth;—bring hither someone else,—a freeborn man,—who shall plead thy cause for thee before us.’ Teucer makes a scathing reply. He reminds the king who it was that saved the ships from Trojan fire and sword,—who it was that met Hector in single combat. ‘Were these deeds not his, who, thou sayest, nowhere set foot where thou wast not?’ As to the taunt that he, Teucer, is disqualified by birth for being the champion of Ajax—can the son of Atreus and Aëropè say that to the son of Telamon and Hesionè? With Tecmessa and Eurysaces, he is ready to die in this cause.

At this point—when nothing seems to remain but that the Atreidae should enforce their will—Odysseus enters. He intercedes with Agamemnon, who is ready to hear ‘his best friend.’ ‘Ajax,’ he says, ‘was my bitterest foe, after I won the arms’: but ‘in all our Greek host which came to Troy, I have seen none who was his peer, save Achilles.’ Agamemnon argues, wavers, and finally says that, though he will always detest Ajax, Odysseus may do as he pleases.

The king having gone, Odysseus proffers friendship to Teucer, and expresses a wish to take part in the obsequies. Teucer warmly thanks him,—contrasting his noble conduct with that of the Atreidae. He fears to accept the co-operation of Odysseus in the actual rites, lest that should displease the dead; but will welcome his presence as a spectator, and his help in conciliating the army. Odysseus assents, and withdraws.

Various tasks in relation to the funeral are now assigned to the Chorus by Teucer. He raises the body of the hero, directing the child to lay his hand upon it, that he too may have a part in the office. Then Ajax is carried forth, followed by his wife and his son, with Teucer and the Salaminian warriors, to be laid by the Hellespont in his grave at Cape Rhoeteum, the grave which was to be ‘ever memorable among menThe words of the Chorus in vv. 1166 f., βροτοῖς τὸν ἀείμνηστον | τάφον..’

The first question Dramatic unity of the play. which this play suggests is one which must be considered before any criticism of detail can be profitably attempted—before, indeed, even the character of the hero himself, as drawn by Sophocles, can be properly appreciated. How did the poet conceive the subject of his drama as a whole? What was the nature of the unity which he intended his work to possess? Ajax dies at verse 865: more than a third of the play follows his death, and is concerned with the question as to whether he is, or is not, to be buried. A reader is apt to feel that, with the suicide of Ajax, the principal interest has disappeared. Modern criticism has suggested various apologies for the latter part of the play; the supreme importance which the ancient Greeks attached to funeral rites, as affecting the condition of the departed spirit; the advantage incidental to the controversy between Teucer and the Atreidae, that the merits of Ajax are triumphantly asserted; the edifying victory of prudence and magnanimity in the person of Odysseus. All such considerations, however, tend only to show, first, that this part of the play would have been interesting, on general grounds, to a Greek audience; and secondly, that it is not irrelevant to the subject of the earlier portion. But more than this is required, if the sequel to the hero's death is to be justified as a matter of dramatic art. It has to be explained how the action of the play, from beginning to end, can be regarded as an organic whole. The idea which pervades it, giving it unity and coherence, must be such that the death of Ajax can be viewed, not as a catastrophe after which everything else becomes tame, but rather as a tragic event necessarily leading to the events which follow it, so that the true climax is reached only in that decision which rescues the corpse of Ajax from dishonour. We must endeavour to trace this idea; or, in other words, to find the point of view from which Sophocles may be supposed to have regarded his own work.

The first circumstance which demands notice is the fact The veto on the burial. that Athena visited Ajax with madness only at the moment when he already stood, in the darkness of night, before the tents of the Atreidae, prepared to murder them in their sleep. He was still sane when he plotted that bloody vengeance against them and the other chiefs. When, after his madness, he regains his sanity, he bitterly laments, at first, that his plan had been foiled. The award of the arms had been unjust. But, none the less, Ajax had merited, by his murderous design, the resentment of the Atreidae and of the Greek army. The public feeling in the camp, on the morning after the outrage, would have fully sustained Agamemnon in visiting him with the extreme penalty which the usage of that age sanctioned in regard to public enemies—the refusal of sepulture. The poet has taken care to let us know this—before the death of Ajax—by the mouth of the messenger who brings the warning of Calchas to Teucer. The Greeks, crowding around Teucer, threaten to stone him, guiltless as he is, merely because he is ‘the kinsman of the maniac who had plotted against the armyVv. 726 ff..’ Ajax himself, in his last speech, forebodes that burial will be refused to him; his only prayer to Zeus is that his body may not be cast to the dogs and birds. The spectators are thus clearly forewarned that, after the fall of Ajax, anger must inevitably break forth against him, menacing him with a calamity more dreadful than death. Hence the intervention of the Atreidae, when it occurs, appears as a necessary consequence of what has preceded. It is the bursting of a storm of which we have seen menacing signs, and even heard the first distant mutterings.

As the intervention of the Atreidae The issue thus raised. has thus a strict coherence with the earlier part of the play, so also the issue which they raise is one which must necessarily be decided, if the earlier action is to reach a dramatic conclusion. For Ajax, at the beginning of the play, has been shown in the deepest humiliation,—a maniac whom Athena exhibits, with his fatuous boasting and his frantic laughter, for the admonition of his successful rival. Yet this Ajax is the same to whom the Athenian spectators, like their fathers before them, had been taught to pay divine honoursThe Athenian cult of Ajax still existed in the time of Pausanias, who says (1. 35. 3): —διαμένουσι δὲ καὶ ἐς τόδε τῷ Αἴαντι παρὰ Ἀθηναίοις τιμαί, αὐτῷ τε καὶ Εὐρυσάκει· καὶ γὰρ Εὐρυσάκους βωμός ἐστιν ἐν Ἀθήναις. After the Athenian conquest of Salamis from the Megarians (circ. 595 B.C.), that island became an Attic deme. It was customary for the Athenian ephebi to take part in the annual celebration of the Αἰάντεια at Salamis ( 108, 232: Mommsen, p. 411). At Athens a sort of lectisternium was held in honour of Ajax (schol. Pind. 2. 19 κλίνην αὐτῷ μετὰ πανοπλίας κοσμεῖν): see on this C. F. Hermann, II. 62 § 46.; the Ajax whose statue they were accustomed to see in the market-place among those of the ten heroes from whom the Attic tribes derived their names Paus. 1. 5. 1.Köhler (in v. p. 340) thinks it almost certain that the statues of the ten ἐπώνυμοι were erected at, or soon after, the time when Cleisthenes instituted the ten tribes ( Her. 5. 66). Wachsmuth (, I. p. 506 n. 2), while recognising that this inference, though probable, is not certain, does not suggest a later date for these statues than the age of Pericles., —his renown being further commemorated by special distinctions which the tribe Aiantis enjoyedSee Plutarch 628B—629 According A. to some elegiac verses of Aeschylus, the Aiantidae were posted on the right wing of the army at Marathon. After the battle of Plataea, they were chosen, as a special honour, to offer the sacrifice on Cithaeron to the Σφραγίτιδες—as the Nymphs of that mountain were called from the cave Σφραγίδιον ( Paus. 9. 3. 9). It was also a tradition (Plutarch says) that, in a competition of tribal choruses, the Αἰαντίς should never be placed last: οὐ γὰρ εὔκολος ἐνεγκεῖν ἧτταν ὁ Τελαμώνιος. Welcker ( for 1829, part 3, p. 61) thinks that in v. 861 of the , κλειναί τ’ Ἀθῆναι καὶ τὸ σύντροφον γένος, the reference is to the Αἰαντὶς φυλή—an ingenious suggestion which Thirlwall approves ( I. p. 524 n. 17). But this would narrow the phrase too much.; the ancestor of two families with which the most illustrious Athenians were proud to be linkedAjax had two sons, Φιλαῖος (by Lysidica), and Eurysaces (by Tecmessa). According to the Attic legend ( 10), these brothers, having been made Athenian citizens, transferred their rights over Salamis to the Athenians, and settled in Attica,—Philaeus at Brauron, Eurysaces at Melitè. The Φιλαΐδαι and Εὐρυσακίδαι were among the noblest families of Athens. Peisistratus ( Plut. 10), Miltiades ( Her. 6. 35) with his son Cimon, and the historian Thucydides (Marcell. § 3), traced their descent from Ajax through Philaeus; Alcibiades ( Plut. 1), through Eurysaces. [Pausanias 1. 35. 2 calls Philaeus a son of Eurysaces.]; the mighty champion who was believed to have been present with the Greeks at Salamis, and who, in the thank-offerings awarded after the victory, was associated with Poseidon and Athena Her. 8. 121: see p. xviii, n. 1.. In following the progress of the play, it would be impossible for Athenians to think of him merely as a great warrior, whose honour had been restored by his resolve to die. They would necessarily think of him also as a sacred ‘hero,’ in the religious sense of that word. The restoration of his honour would not be complete, in their view, unless, at the end, he appeared as a fitting recipient of the worship which they paid to him. But, for such an end, it was indispensable that he should receive funeral rites. The cult of a ‘hero’ meant the worship of the spirit of a dead man, who in life had been pre-eminent for great qualities. The first condition of such worship was that the departed spirit should have been duly admitted to the realm of the nether gods by the rendering of funeral rites. The central point in the cult of a ‘hero’ was his tomb. The offerings at the hero's tomb (or at a ‘herôon’ which represented it) corresponded, in that cult, with the sacrifices offered to the gods at their altars ἐναγίζειν is the ordinary term for making offerings at a grave to the departed spirit (Isae. or. 6 § 51 ἐπὶ τὰ μνήματα ἰέναι χεόμενον καὶ ἐναγιοῦντα), and is regularly used with reference to the cult of a hero, as opposed to θύειν: Her. 2. 44 τῷ μὲν ὡς ἀθανάτῳ...θύουσι, τῷ δὲ ἑτέρῳ ὡς ἥρωι ἐναγίζουσι. (Cp. Paus. 2. 11. 7.) See also Diod. Sic. 4. 39 (referring to Heracles) ὡς ἥρωι ποιήσαντες ἁγισμοὺς καὶ χώματα κατασκευάσαντες: i.e., they erected mounds, which were to be symbols of his tomb in the several localities—ἡρῷα—and directed that the ἁγισμοί (=ἐναγίσματα) should be offered there. Thuc. 5. 11§ 1 (of Brasidas) περιέρξαντες αὐτοῦ τὸ μνημεῖον ὡς ἥρωί τε ἐντέμνουσι (=ἐναγίζουσι) καὶ τιμὰς δεδώκασιν.. The prehistoric tumuli on the shore of the Hellespont, associated with the names of Achilles, Patroclus, and Ajax, were regarded as the monuments which attested that those heroes had received due sepulture, and were, in fact, the primary shrines of their respective cults—honoured, as such, in every age of Greek antiquitySee Preller, II. p. 6, as to the bearing of such mounds, or of supposed ‘relics,’ on the earlier cult of heroes.. So when an Athenian audience heard the Atreidae insisting that the corpse of Ajax should be ‘food for the birds by the sea,’ and Teucer insisting that it should be duly buried the interest of the dispute for them did not depend merely on the importance of burial as a condition of peace for any departed spirit. The question involved much more than that,—viz., the whole claim of Ajax to the sanctity of a ‘hero,’—one with which so many traditions of Athens were bound up. The Athenian feeling would be analogous to that of a medieval audience witnessing a drama which concerned the life of a canonized saint, in which the doubtful issue was whether the powers of evil would succeed in making him commit some sin which would doom his soul beyond the hope of pardon. Such an audience would have followed, with a like depth of interest, the process by which the wiles of the tempter were defeated at the moment when they seemed about to triumph, and the man emerged at the end, notwithstanding weaknesses and lapses, as a worthy object of religious veneration.

These, then, are the grounds on which the dramatic unity of the rests. First, the veto upon the burial of Ajax is an inevitable consequence of his action, and one for which the spectator has been prepared; so that the latter part of the play is not an arbitrary addition to the former, but a natural, indeed a necessary, development of it. Secondly, this veto raises an issue still more momentous, for Athenians, than the question whether Ajax is to live or die; viz., the issue whether he is, or is not, to attain the sanctity of a hero. Hence the true climax of the play is not his death, but the decision that he shall be buried.

Consecration as a hero The successive moods of Ajax. is the goal to which the poet brings Ajax; and this is to be remembered in tracing the mental phases through which he passes. On first recovering his sanity, he gives utterance to bitter lamentation, deploring the triumph of his foes and his own disgrace, and praying for death. Then the resolve to die takes definite shape in his mind: he forms it with full deliberation, after a review of the possible alternatives. He takes farewell of his child, with a stern tenderness both for him and for Tecmessa. He silences her appeals, curtly and roughly —but the very roughness indicates that a struggle is going on within him. Then he retires into the solitude of his tent. After an interval, during which the Chorus chant an ode, he comes forth again, sword in hand, and delivers that speech, which, more His speech in vv. 646 —692. than any other passage in the play, has divided the opinions of critics. A correct appreciation of it is, indeed, of the first importance. On the meaning attached to parts of it must depend our conception of the mood in which Sophocles meant Ajax to quit life; and this, in turn, must affect the interpretation of the play as a whole.

He begins thus:—

All things the long and countless years first draw from darkness, then bury from light; and there is nothing for which man may not look; the dread oath is vanquished, and the stubborn will. For even I, erst so wondrous firm,—yea, as iron hardened in the dipping,—felt the keen edge of my temper softened by yon woman's words; and I feel the pity of leaving her a widow with my foes, and the boy an orphan.

It was once the prevalent view that this utterance, like all others in the speech, must be regarded as deliberately designed by Ajax to mislead his hearers, Tecmessa and the Chorus. While he speaks these words, he is still resolved to die: that is certain. It was inferred that he must be grimly ironical when he speaks of having been ‘softened,’ or of ‘feeling pity’ at leaving his wife and child. WelckerIn his excellent essay on the in the for 1829, pt. 3, pp. 43—92, 229—264 (reprinted in his ). was the first to maintain— what is unquestionably true—that a change of mood has really taken place in Ajax. He has been touched by Tecmessa's pleading; he does feel pity. Nor is it necessary to suppose that this change has been abrupt—taking place during his brief seclusion in the tent. Ajax is rugged, imperious and resolute, but not hard of heart: his love for his wife and his child have been hinted already. His words now suggest, indeed, that his new pity will forbid him to die. So far—and so far only—they are delusive.

He continues:—

But I will go to the bathing-place and the meadows by the shore, that in purging of my stains I may flee the heavy anger of the goddess. Then I will seek out some untrodden spot, and bury this sword, hatefullest of weapons, digging in the earth where none shall see; no, let Night and Hades keep it underground! For since my hand took this gift from Hector, my worst foe, to this hour I have had no good from the Greeks. Yes, men's proverb is true: , and bring no good.

The words fit his real design. He is indeed going to ‘purge his stains’—by death. He will fix his sword in the earth, and ‘bury’ it—in his body; Night shall ‘keep it underground’—in his grave. But is it not manifest that, after his previous reference to the change in his mood, his hearers would necessarily understand these words in their literal sense—as meaning that he would wash off with sea-water the stains left on him by the slaughter of the cattle,—would seek to propitiate Athena,—and would bury his ill-omened sword in the ground, where it could do no more mischief? This is so evident that it would seem hardly needful to state it, were it not that some eminent critics had maintained a different view. Welcker p. 229. Welcker compares the language of Ajax here to that of the prayer which Clytaemnestra utters in Electra's presence—a κεκρυμμένη βάξις, as she herself terms it ( 638). That is, the terms in which Ajax expresses his purpose are, indeed, only allusive; but there is nothing in them which it is impossible for the hearers to understand; no clue is wanting which they do not possess,—as Aegisthus, for instance, does not possess the clue to Electra's irony ( 1448 ff.). The answer to Welcker's view may, I think, be given in Aristotle's phrase ( 1. 2.§ 13), ὁ γὰρ κριτὴς ὑπόκειται εἶναι ἁπλοῦς. A sufficiently acute hearer would perhaps have suspected the truth; but the Chorus and Tecmessa are supposed to be simple persons., followed by ThudichumIn his German Translation of Sophocles, with notes: vol. II. pp. 150 f. (1838). He is in general agreement with Welcker; but allows that, if Ajax had no intention to deceive, it is at least remarkable that his purpose is described throughout only in ‘figurative’ language; and that a misapprehension of it would be easy., and (with some qualifications) by ThirlwallIn his essay ‘On the Irony of Sophocles,’ where Welcker's view of this speech is examined, and, on the whole, approved (, vol. I. pp. 514 ff.: 1833). Thirlwall is the only writer (so far as I know) who has really grappled with the objections to Welcker's view that the words κρύψω τόδ’ ἔγχος τοὐμόν, etc., might be spoken by Ajax without intention to deceive. He grants that this passage ‘at first sight’ suggests ‘a deliberate intention to mislead.’ Nay, he admits that any other view is ‘scarcely possible, if it had been only the fatality of the weapon that he had in his thoughts.’ [The italics are mine.] ‘But,’ Thirlwall proceeds, ‘perhaps it may be more easily conceived, if we suppose him to have reflected on it rather as having been once the object of his pride, a tribute of respect to his valour from a respected enemy, and afterward the instrument of his shame. He was now about to expiate his pride, and to wipe off his shame: in both respects he might be said to “hide” his sword in the most emphatic sense, when he sheathed it in his own body.’—Thirlwall's argument (as I understand it) comes to this. It is just conceivable that, in saying κρύψω τόδ’ ἔγχος, etc., Ajax did not intend to deceive, if we suppose that the thought in his mind was:—‘I will put that sword, once my glory and my joy, out of sight for ever’ [and not: ‘I will bury that sword, which has brought me only woe’]: because the words, so viewed, would suggest an antithesis between glorious life—and something else. But, if Ajax had been thus thinking of his sword, as ‘once the object of his pride,’ would he have said merely, κρύψω τόδ’ ἔγχος τοὐμόν, ἔχθιστον βελῶν? Does not this (with the two verses which follow) clearly show that it was ‘only the fatality of the weapon that he had in his thoughts’?, thinks that Ajax has no intention to mislead his hearers: he expresses his real purpose, in veiled language, no doubt, but it is their fault that they do not understand him. This view we may unhesitatingly reject. Ajax deliberately deceives his hearers. The art by which he does so, without saying anything that is not verbally true, is so contrived as to give the spectators the kind of pleasure which is felt in guessing a riddle. It would be a mistake to suppose that ancient Greeks would have seen anything unworthy or unheroic in the use of such deception. He is resolved to die, and to die in solitude. He also feels a real tenderness for those whom he is leaving. He cannot part from them in silence; nor, again, can he bring himself to speak openly, and to part from them—as would then be necessary—by force. He therefore veils his farewell so that it is such only to his own mind, not to their apprehension. Greeks would think of this as of a stratagem in war; and the hero would not suffer in their eyes, since the end in view is (as they would think) heroic. Ajax next says:—

Therefore henceforth I shall know how to yield to the gods, and learn to revere the Atreidae. They are rulers, so we must submit. How else? Dread things and things most potent bow to office; thus it is that snowstrewn winter gives place to fruitful summer; and thus night's weary round makes room for day with her white steeds to kindle light; and the breath of dreadful winds can allow the groaning sea to slumber; and, like the rest, almighty Sleep looses whom he has bound, nor holds with a perpetual grasp.

And we—must we not learn discretion? I, at least, will learn it; for I am newly aware that our enemy is to be hated but as one who will hereafter be a friend; and towards a friend I would wish but thus far to show aid and service, as knowing that he will not always abide. For to most men the haven of friendship is false.

Here it is of especial moment to determine how far he is saying what he really means, and how far he is ironical. Is he ironical, to begin with, in saying that he will ‘yield to the gods’? When Tecmessa appealed to him in their name, he cried out, in the sharp anguish of the moment, that he owed them no further service (v. 589 f.)—as he had said before that he was ‘plainly hateful’ to them (v. 457). But, since then, he has been alone for a time with his own thoughts, and (as we have seen) his mood has been changed by pity for those whom he is leaving. If his profession of ‘yielding to the gods’ were ironical, his real meaning must be that he defies them: he would be a Capaneus, a MezentiusAs is well observed by Welcker (p. 235), and by Thirlwall (p. 519).. But the sense in which he ‘yields’ to the gods is not merely that he takes a step to which they have driven him, and retires from life: to ‘yield,’ in that sense, would be merely to accept the inevitable. He ‘yields’ to the gods in the further sense that he has come to see the folly of the pride in which he formerly despised their help. His words are sad, and are tinged with bitterness; still, they are the proof that he has been chastened by the judgment of Athena, and has learned not ‘to think thoughts too high for man.’ But what is to be said of his other promise,—‘to revere the Atreidae’? In his last soliloquy he invokes the Furies to punish them for his wrongs. We might be inclined to say that here, at least, he speaks with bitter irony. And that there is some irony in the form of the phrase, need not be doubted. But then submission to the gods and reverence for the Atreidae are alike enforced by him in the sublime illustration which he draws from the elemental powers of nature. To employ imagery so solemn and so beautiful for the purpose of pointing mere mockery would be incongruous and repulsive. Undoubtedly Sophocles conceived Ajax as really meaning that he would thenceforth ‘revere the Atreidae’—in this sense:—that he had come to recognise his offence against social order in failing to reverence their station, and to accept the authoritative award of the arms without attempting to exact vengeance. Such a perception would be in no way inconsistent with continued resentment against the Atreidae personally, as unjust men, or with an invocation of divine avengers to smite them. Thus the conversion which Ajax announces in himself is a real one: the element of deception is in his mode of stating it; since, when he says that ‘henceforthVerse 666, τὸ λοιπόν. For Ajax himself this signifies, ‘in what of life remains to me.’ Thirlwall observes (op. cit. p. 519): ‘These professions would certainly be mere dissimulation if they referred to anything but the approaching termination of his career, whereas they seem to imply a prospect of its continuance. Yet, if Ajax contemplated his death as a satisfaction both to divine and human justice, his manner of describing the lesson which he had learnt and would thenceforth practise, is not unnatural, but strongly emphatic.’ The last sentence is true; but not (I venture to think) the dilemma stated in the first. Ajax means his hearers to understand that he has resolved to go on living. Yet his utterance is not ‘mere dissimulation’; for he is really prepared to ‘yield to the gods,’ and (in his own sense) to ‘revere the Atreidae.’’ he will practise these precepts, he implies, and clearly intends his hearers to understand, that he will continue to live.

The speech ends thus:—

But concerning these things it will be well.—Woman, go thou within, and pray to the gods that in all fulness the desires of my heart may be fulfilled. And ye, my friends,—honour ye these my wishes even as she doth; and bid Teucer, when he come, have care for me, and good-will towards you withal. For I will go whither I must pass; but do ye what I bid; and ere long, perchance, though now I suffer, ye will hear that I have found peace.

Welcker argues that Ajax cannot have intended to mislead his friends, because this last passage plainly points to death: indeed, he thinks, the poet might even be reproached with some disregard of probability in allowing the Chorus to be deceived by it. It is true that the disguise is thinnest here. But the meaning which hearers would attach to the words would necessarily depend on what had gone before. When the belief that Ajax meant to live had been fixed in their minds by the earlier part of the speech, nothing in this last part could undeceive them.

The foregoing analysis will have shown that I cannot entirely agree with any interpretation of this speech, as a whole, which has hitherto been given. The difficulties which have been felt in it have largely arisen (as it appears to me) from an assumption, express or tacit, that every part of the speech must bear a similar relation to the real thoughts of Ajax. It has been supposed that everywhere he is practising dissimulationFor instance, Döderlein, in his essay on the , sums up his estimate of the speech in the words, ‘tota simulatio est’ (, vol. II. p. 120, 1837). Schlegel's view is similar (, p. 107, Eng. tr.). This was, indeed, the traditional conception.; or else that everywhere he is saying what he really means, darkly, indeed, yet without the intention of deceivingThus Thirlwall says (op. cit. p. 519): ‘If the aim of Ajax is to deceive his friends, admitting the contrivance to be worthy of his character, and consistent with his previous conduct, he cannot reasonably be supposed more in earnest in one part of the speech than another.’. The fact seems to be rather that three distinct threads are subtly interwoven in the texture of the speech; viz., direct expression of his real mind; irony in a form which does not necessarily imply the intention to mislead; and artifice of language so elaborate as necessarily to imply such an intention, at any rate when addressed to simple hearers. While the change of purpose is feigned, the change of mood is real. At his first return to sanity, he had thought of death only as a refuge from disgrace and a recovery of honour. He has now come to view it also as an atonement due to Athena. He recognises the sin of his former over-weening self-confidence. In this sense he dies reconciled to the gods. And that reconciliation has come through the human affections. He had listened to Tecmessa, and parted from his son, without being turned from his resolve, but not without being profoundly moved. The inward workings of pity recalled him to a human standard of feeling, and so revived his sense of human weakness, and of the submission which mortals owe to gods. It was as natural for an ancient Greek to derive fear of the gods from a painful breaking of human ties as it is for Christians to deduce the love of man from the love of God.

In the final soliloquy of Ajax, his change of mood is His imprecation upon the Greeks. obscured by another sentiment which moderns might think inconsistent with it,—viz., his fierce vindictiveness towards those who had given the award of the arms against him (vv. 835 ff.):—

And I call for help to the maidens who live for ever, and ever look on all the woes of men, the dread, far-striding Furies; let them mark how my miserable life is blasted by the Atreidae. And may they overtake those evil men with doom most evil and with utter blight !...Come, ye swift and vengeful Furies, glut your wrath on all the host, and spare not!

To the ancients, however, such utterances would have seemed perfectly compatible with the altered mood of Ajax. He has come to see that he erred in his over-weening selfreliance; he ‘yields to the gods,’ and acknowledges that the office of human rulers claims respect: but he also feels implacable resentment for a wrong. ‘Benefit thy friends and hurt thy foes,’ was the received Greek maxim. Now and again a higher ethical teaching declares that the just man will not knowingly injure any one E.g. Plat. 1. p. 335 D οὐκ ἄρα τοῦ δικαίου βλάπτειν ἔργον...οὔτε φίλον οὔτ’ ἄλλον οὐδένα: in opposition to the common maxim (ib. A), δίκαιον εἶναι τὸν μὲν φίλον εὖ ποιεῖν, τὸν δὲ ἐχθρὸν κακῶς.. But a man might be morally good, in the ordinary Greek view, and also pious (εὐσεβής), without accepting that doctrine: Solon, who was esteemed both, prays that he may be ‘sweet to his friends and bitter to his foesFrag. 13. 5 (Bergk), εἶναι δὲ γλυκὺν ὧδε φίλοις, ἐχθροῖσι δὲ πικρόν.’; Pindar, a pre-eminently religious poet, who speaks as with the voice of Delphi, expresses a like sentiment 2. 83 φίλον εἴη φιλεῖν· | ποτὶ δ’ ἐχθρὸν ἅτ’ ἐχθρὸς ἐὼν λύκοιο δίκαν ὑποθεύσομαι.. A striking parallel to the case of Ajax here is presented by that of Oedipus at Colonus. Oedipus has found rest and peace at the shrine of the Eumenides; he has been reconciled with the gods; he is already invested with a kind of sanctity; he is on his way— like Ajax—to consecration as a hero: and it is in these circumstances that he utters the appalling imprecations on his sons. Still, in one respect the vindictiveness of Ajax must appear monstrous; he invokes destruction, not only on the chiefs, but on ‘all the host.’ It can hardly be said that the army at large were involved in the guilt of the awardThis is the apology suggested by Welcker ( for 1829, III. p. 246), and by Thirlwall ( I. p. 521: ‘the army had sanctioned and shared the iniquity of its chiefs’). I cannot think that it is satisfactory.; they had nothing to do with it, and could not prevent or reverse it. A simpler account of the matter seems to be that the punishment of the army is conceived as a further penalty on the chiefs. This would be thoroughly Homeric. Apollo avenges his priest on Agamemnon by plaguing the whole army, just as he might have punished a wicked shepherd by a murrain.

Ajax passes, then, The divine judgment. Athena. reconciled to the gods; and so in a manner suited to that event which is the real end of the play, his accession to the order of worshipped heroes. We may now briefly consider the nature of the divine discipline which he undergoes. The words of the seer Calchas, reported by the MessengerVerses 756—779., must be taken as interpreting the poet's conception of it. Ajax had angered Athena by certain proud words, saying that he did not need divine aid in battle. These were casual boasts, in seasons of elation—like that vaunt of Agamemnon, on hitting a stag, which angered ArtemisSee n. on v. 569.. Ajax was not a bad or impious man; but he showed a pride, too great for a mortal, which required chastisement. Athena chose the moment when a wound to this pride had goaded him into plotting the murder of the chiefs. She struck him with the madness in which he slew the cattle. When the frenzy was past, there settled over him a profound despondency which was also sent by her, being the sequel of her visitation. If (said Calchas) he could only be kept in the tent for that day, all would be well; the anger of Athena would vex him for that day only. That is, the despair, which bent his thoughts on suicide, would depart from him on the morrow. He would see that honour did not require his death, since his frenzy had been the judgment of the goddess; cured of his arrogance, he might give new proofs of prudence and valour. But here destiny came in: the message of Calchas arrived too late.

In the opening scene, where Athena holds the dialogue with Ajax and displays his madness, her terrible irony might at first suggest that she is a malignant goddess, exulting in the wretchedness of her victim; but any such impression would be soon corrected by those words of calm majesty in which she points the moral for Odysseus. There is no trace of personal malignity in her attitude towards Ajax. She represents the divine power which judges human arrogance; she corrects it; but she has justly measured the offence, and sets a corresponding limit to her chastisement. It is fated that Ajax shall die; but the shadow of Athena's anger does not rest upon his grave, or trouble the worship which her own people render to him.

Odysseus, appearing only at the beginning and at the Odysseus. end of the play, is the human exponent of Athena's spirit. In the first scene he is engaged in a pursuit which the goddess declares to be characteristic of him,—the endeavour to track out Ajax, and to ascertain whether he is the author of the onslaught on the cattle. Athena is aiding him, and now, as ever, he is ‘guided by her hand.’ After witnessing the frenzy of his foe, he at once proves himself her true disciple by the pity which he feels, and by his quickened sense of human nothingness. As Athena says to him, ‘The wise of heart are loved of the gods.’ At the close of the drama, when he intercedes with Agamemnon, he urges that the career of Ajax must be judged as a whole; that he was their greatest man after Achilles; and that the enmity against him must not be carried beyond death. Agamemnon yields to him: Teucer praises his magnanimity. Yet this magnanimity bears the mark of being Athena's gift; it springs from high intelligence as much as from chivalrous sentiment. Odysseus may, in his turn, be afflicted by a god; he, too, may come to need a grave; and therefore he sympathises with AjaxV. 124 οὐδὲν τὸ τούτου μᾶλλον ἢ τοὐμὸν σκοπῶν: v. 1365 καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸς ἐνθάδ’ ἵξομαι.. This is ‘to think as befits a man,’—the wise moderation which the gods love, and which, though not disinterested, leads to generous action. When Odysseus shrinks from confronting the herculean maniac, this is not ‘cowardice’; if Athena calls it soV. 75 οὐ σῖγ’ ἀνέξει μηδὲ δειλίαν ἀρεῖ; M. Patin (, p. 11) remarks that this passage has been much censured, as if it defamed Odysseus; whereas that very pursuit of Ajax, in which he is engaged, sufficiently attests his courage. That is true; but we must also allow, I think, that the alarm of Odysseus is so described that it might easily raise a smile (see, e.g., v. 88 μένοιμ’ ἄν· ἤθελον δ’ ἂν ἐκτὸς ὢν τυχεῖν). There was a tendency in post-Homeric poetry to depict Odysseus, the representative of φρόνησις, as subordinating valour to discretion; (see Introd. to the p. xvii, xxxi;) though in Sophocles this tendency is controlled by a delicate tact. Here, the dramatic motive for the trepidation of Odysseus is to bring into stronger relief all that is terrible in the condition of Ajax., it is because he forgets her promise to protect himVv. 68—70.; what it really indicates is his habitual reasonableness and prudence. On the whole, the Odysseus of this play much resembles the hero of the (who pays a generous tribute to the sullen Ajax in the shades 11. 556 f.); a resemblance which is mainly due to the direct and ennobling guidance of Athena.

The part of Teucer Teucer. has a singular pathos. He is altogether devoted to his brother Ajax, by whose side he so often fought, and is strenuously loyal to the trust reposed in him. When he arrives, his first thought is for the safety of Eurysaces. With Teucer alone it rests to defend the memory of Ajax, and to insist that he shall have burial. Firm in his good cause, he braves the threats and repels the taunts of the Atreidae. Yet he well knows the prospect that is before him. When he thinks of his return to Salamis, he can foresee the fury with which the aged Telamon will denounce him, the son of the slave-woman, as the base betrayer of his true-born brother. He will be cast off, and driven forth into exileVv. 1006—1020. The reference here to the subject of the poet's Τεῦκρος is like that in the (1410 n.) to his , and that in the (1437 ff.) to his Φιλοκτήτης ἐν Τροίᾳ..

The intervention of the Atreidae His scenes with the Atreidae. has already been considered in its general relation to the dominant idea of the play. Their scenes with Teucer now require consideration from a different point of view, viz., with regard to the poetical workmanship. One aim of the poet has evidently been to prolong the controversy sufficiently for a gradual tension of interest. This is especially manifest in the words of the Chorus after the exit of Menelaüs,—‘A dread strife will be brought to the trialV. 1163.’; words which mark the crescendo, and prepare the way for Agamemnon. The whole process which leads up to the climax is skilfully managed. First, there is the scene between Teucer and Menelaüs. The king of Sparta has those traits of harshness and arrogance which Athenian audiences would expect in the partIt is to Menelaüs that the Andromachè of Euripides addresses her invective against Sparta ( 445 ff.).—Welcker ( for 1829, pt. iii. pp. 258 ff.) finds allusions in this part of the play to contemporary relations between Athens and Sparta (Menelaüs), and between Athens and Argos (Agamemnon): but I cannot think that the poet intended this., and is clearly intended to be more odious than his brother. Though he is not the Captain General,—as Teucer reminds him, —yet the insubordination of Ajax is the topic on which he chooses to dwell. Ajax, he complains, would never obey him; and then he enlarges (like Creon in the ) on the public danger of unruliness. After his angry dialogue with Teucer, he departs, with a hint of appeal to force. Then comes that beautiful scene which affords a pause between the two parts of the controversy; the child Eurysaces is brought in by Tecmessa, and placed as a suppliant by the corpse of Ajax. In the choral ode which follows, it may be noticed that the closing prayer—to pass beneath Sunium, and ‘greet sacred Athens’—is peculiarly suggestive at this point, when Teucer has just encountered the Spartan, and is about to withstand the Argive. The second chapter of the contest then begins with the entrance of Agamemnon. He alone can finally decide whether burial shall or shall not be granted. Whereas Menelaüs had resented the want of deference in Ajax, Agamemnon takes a more vital point, and depreciates his services. This calls forth the fine vindication of Ajax by Teucer, in which the debate culminates. The short dialogue which ensues between Agamemnon and Odysseus shows the former in a comparatively favourable light, and illustrates his superiority to Menelaüs. If he is not gracious or generous, he at least indicates a wish to see his dutySee on v. 1350, τόν τοι τύραννον εὐσεβεῖν οὐ ῥᾴδιον. There is a somewhat similar utterance of Agamemnon in a fragment of the (fr. 481 Nauck), where he is perplexed by conflicting demands upon him., and is capable of yielding to wise counsel. Thus the whole controversy concerning the burial of Ajax has variety, dramatic life, and a gradually rising interest.

To those who further realise Modern criticism on this part of the play. that the decision concerning the burial is the true climax of the drama, this part of the play will certainly not appear unworthy of its author. The disfavour which it has sometimes found with modern criticism may be ascribed partly to inadequate appreciation of its poetical art and dramatic significance, but more, perhaps, to the fact that a prolonged rhetorical debate has not the same attraction for modern readers which an ancient Athenian audience found in it. The example of Aeschylus in his , where Ajax and Odysseus spoke in support of their respective claims, may have had some influence in leading Sophocles to compensate for the more restricted scope of his subject by providing a rhetorical interest of a similar kind. A fragment of AeschylusSee above, p. xx, n. 5. indicates that his heroes exchanged taunts of the same nature as those which pass between Teucer and the Atreidae. It may be granted that some parts of the scene between Teucer and Menelaüs are wholly repugnant to a modern tasteEspecially vv. 1142—1158.. The best apology for them is that Attic Tragedy was a popular entertainment, and that Athenian hearers not only tolerated but expected sharp personalities in a strenuous debate, however dignified the disputants or the occasion,—as Demosthenes is a witness. But there is no ground for any such suspicion as that of Bergk vol. III. p. 381. Cp. Bernhardy, pt. II. sect. ii. p. 366., that the latter part of the play is by an inferior poet (such as Iophon , the usual scape-goat),—and has been tacked on to an early play of Sophocles, which stopped, or was left unfinished, at the death of Ajax. A careful and sympathetic study will rather leave a conviction on the mind that both the dramatic treatment and the diction bear the stamp of Sophocles, though some of the details are not in his happiest vein, and though the form of the whole—a prolonged controversy—makes a somewhat exacting demand on the modern The test of performance.reader. When the is seen on the stage,—and this is the proper test,—a modern spectator finds that in the latter part of it the interest is thoroughly sustainedThe was performed at Cambridge, by members of the University, in 1882. No result of that experiment was more striking than the decisive proof which it afforded that the , as a whole, is a thoroughly effective play for the stage, and that its power of holding an audience is not diminished by the death of the hero at a comparatively early moment in the action.. The foreground is full of movement and animation, as Menelaüs, Agamemnon and Odysseus successively appear; while the pathetic group in the background—the child kneeling in supplication by his father's body, with Tecmessa near him—keeps before the mind the significance of the issue which is in suspense. It is then, far more easily than in a mere perusal of the text, that one can view the whole action of the play in a right perspective; and justice is instinctively rendered to the degree in which, here as elsewhere, Sophocles evinces his command over the highest art of the theatre.

A few words may suffice to characterise those minor Tecmessa. persons of the drama whose principal function is to bring the central figure into relief. Tecmessa, the daughter of a Phrygian prince, whom the fate of war has given to Ajax, loves him with a submissive devotion, and has won from him a constant affection. He is ‘her dread lord, of rugged might’; standing to her in the place of country, parents, everything; her only stay and hope on earth. She appreciates his great qualities in their obvious aspects. His laments, in his first despair, affright her, because they seem alien from his nature; but she has no insight into the workings of his mind. She is easily lulled into the belief that he has abandoned the purpose of self-destruction, since the only distinct idea which she had connected with it was that of the misery which it would bring upon her. When her fears are suddenly re-awakened, she bitterly cries that she has been ‘deceived.’ To her, the one question had been whether the love that he owed her would prevail on him to live; she had no clear perception of any other motives, that might urge him to die; still less could she measure their force. After his death, her simple loyalty refuses to think of him as crushed by his foes. It is no triumph for them, but a blank loss: the victory is rather his: ‘All that he yearned to win hath he made his own,—the death for which he longed.’ Death was what he desired, and the gods consented; that is all that she understands, beyond the import for herselfSee vv. 961—973..

The Salaminians The Chorus. are the staunch followers of Ajax, true to him in weal or woe, and jealous of his good name, which is their own. He turns to them in his misery, as to tried friends, charging them with his last wishes, and with his message to Teucer. But their leading characteristic is their complete dependence on Ajax, and their utter helplessness when his protection is withdrawn. They are dismayed by the anger of the Greeks, and at one moment even think of seeking safety in flight; they bewail the hardships of the camp, and pine for the delights of home. In thus portraying them, the poet probably intended to suggest the Homeric contrast between the passive common folk (λαοί) and the ‘Zeus-nurtured’ chiefs. The Salaminians contribute to illustrate the greatness of the hero who had been their ‘defence against nightly terror and the darts of the foe’; even their complainings, however unmeet for warriors, serve to recall the weary stress of those ten years at Troy during which Ajax had been the bulwark of the ungrateful Achaeans.

The sequel to the story The of Sophocles. of Ajax was treated by Sophocles in two of his lost plays, the and the The subject of the former is already adumbrated in the (1008—1020): Teucer, on his return to Salamis, is upbraided and expelled by Telamon. A few verses remain from a speech in which the aged king lamented the death of his son, —verses of much beauty and pathos, which reveal some gentler traits in the gloomy and choleric Telamon:—

ὡς ἄῤ, ὦ τέκνον, κενὴν ἐτερπόμην σου τέρψιν εὐλογουμένου ὡς ζῶντος· ἡ δ’ ἄρ’ ἐν σκότῳ λήθουσά με ἔσαιν’ Ἐρινὺς ἡδοναῖς ἐψευσμένον Soph. fr. 519 (Nauck), from Stobaeus 122. 10..

This work is supposed to have been the model of Pacuvius in his tragedy of the same name, from which Cicero quotes part of the passionate reproaches addressed by Telamon to Teucer Cic. 2. 46. 193. Ribbeck, , pp. 116 ff. A fragment of the of Sophocles (no. 520 Nauck), belonging to the description of a storm, may be compared with a similar fragment (no. XV. Ribbeck) from the of Pacuvius. .

The of Sophocles is known only by the citation His of a single word from itHesych. s. v. ἀδόξαστον. Soph. fr. 204 (Nauck).; but a probable conjecture as to its argument has been based on fragments from the of Attius, taken in connection with a passage of JustinFor the fragments of the of Attius, see Ribbeck, pp. 179 ff. They contain the complaints of some one who is being driven forth into exile, and who upbraids the Greeks with their ingratitude. That this person was Teucer, is inferred by Welcker ( p. 198) from Justin XLIV. 3, in which, with great probability, he finds an outline of the plot: Gallaeci Graecam sibi originem asserunt: siquidem post finem Troiani belli Teucrum morte Aiacis fratris invisum patri Telamoni, cum non reciperetur in regnum, Cyprum concessisse, atque ibi urbem nomine antiquae patriae Salaminam condidisse. Inde accepta opinione paternae mortis patriam repetisse. Sed cum ab Eurysace, Aiacis filio, accessu prohiberetur, Hispaniae litoribus appulsum loca, ubi nunc est Carthago nova, occupasse; inde Gallaeciam transisse, et positis sedibus genti nomen dedisse. . After his repulse by Telamon, Teucer had founded the new Salamis in Cyprus. On a report of Telamon's death reaching him there, he returned to the old Salamis; but was repelled by Eurysaces, and finally settled among the Gallaeci in the north-west of Spain.

An Αἴας μαινόμενος is ascribed to Astydamas (c. 360 B.C.), The story of Ajax in later literature. the younger of two tragic poets who bore that nameNauck, p. 777.. The title suggests a play similar in general scope to that of Sophocles; but nothing is known of it. The Αἴας of Carcinus (c. 375 B.C.?) is equally unknown p. 797.. The Αἴας of Theodectes (c. 330 B.C.) appears to have been more on the lines of Aeschylus; i.e., it contained the Ὅπλων κρίσις, with speeches by Ajax and Odysseus p. 801. One of the points for which Aristotle refers to the Αἴας of Theodectes taken from a speech of Odysseus ( II. 23§ 24).. That contest appears as a theme for rhetorical prose in the harangues for the two heroes which are ascribed to Antisthenes (c. 380 B.C.), and which in any case date probably from the fourth century B.C.These pieces, entitled Αἴας and Ὀδυσσεύς, are printed in the (p. 167) edited by H. Sauppe, who, with H. FossE. , questions the ascription to Antisthenes. They are ἐπιδείξεις of the same class as the speeches for and against Palamedes ascribed respectively to Gorgias and Alcidamas, and the of Isocrates. (Cp. , vol. II. p. 89, new ed.)

The earliest author of Latin tragedy, the Greek freedman Livius Andronicus, wrote an , doubtless founded, as the title indicates, on Sophocles. These words occurred in it:—

Praestatur laus virtuti, sed multo ocius Verno gelu tabescitFrag. II. (Ribbeck, p. 2). :

an echo, probably, of the words in the (vv. 1266 f.),

φεῦ· τοῦ θανόντος ὡς ταχεῖά τις βροτοῖς χάρις διαρρεῖ .

The metaphor of the melting frost (scarcely a happy image for evanescent praise) may have been suggested by διαρρεῖ. Nothing is known as to the of Ennius, but one of the two verses which remain from it recalls a passage in the of SophoclesFrag. II. (Ribbeck, p. 17): The word tullii is explained by Festus as=silani (springs), or rivi. The sense is then, ‘The warm blood flows,—the streams fly forth, spirting out the life.’ There is a marked resemblance, as Scaliger noted, to Soph. 1411 ff., ἔτι γὰρ θερμαὶ | σύριγγες ἄνω φυσῶσι μέλαν | μένος. The verbal parallelism of efflantes with φυσῶσι, and tepido with θερμαί, strongly suggests imitation.. If we may suppose that Ennius, like Livius Andronicus, based his treatment of the subject wholly or mainly on Sophocles, then there is significance in the fact that the later dramatists, Pacuvius and Attius, each wrote an Ribbeck, p. 80 (Pacuvius): p. 154 (Attius).; a title which suggests that the desire to vary from their Latin predecessors sent them back to the Ὅπλων κρίσις of Aeschylus, and possibly to the play of Theodectes. A fragment from the of Attius belongs to the speech in which Odysseus urged his claim to the arms. The verse which Attius has paraphrased from the (vv. 550 f.),

Virtuti sis par, dispar fortunis patris, suggests, however, that he may have imitated Sophocles in other details also; perhaps seeking, by such eclecticism of treatment, to distinguish his work from the earlier of Pacuvius. The rhetorical capabilities of the subject are illustrated by Ovid, whose powers of brilliant and ingenious declamation are seen to considerable advantage in the speeches of Ajax and Odysseus XIII. 1—398.. His spirited and pointed verse presents a striking contrast to the tame and mechanical treatment of the same episode in the Greek epic of Quintus Smyrnaeus v. 181—316..

The earliest reference in modern literature to the of Sophocles is of sufficient interest to deserve a passing mention here; it occurs in the first scene of , v. 379:—

The Greeks upon advice did bury Ajax That slew himself; and wise Laertes' son Did graciously plead for his funerals.

As Steevens saw, these lines must have been written (or prompted) by some one who knew the itself; for no translation of Sophocles existed in the sixteenth century, and the mediation of Odysseus is not mentioned elsewhere. Modern criticism doubts, and with good reason, whether Shakespeare had any part in the See Dowden, , p. 54., though Meres, in 1598, included it among his plays: and in this passage, at all events, we seem to see the work of a playwright who had been at one of the Universities.

It is interesting to inquire how far the influence of the Illustrations from ancient Art.poets can be traced in such works of Greek art as are concerned with the tragic end of Ajax. A favourite subject was the actual contest for the arms. Some red-figured vases, of the fifth century B.C., show Ajax and Odysseus vehemently disputing the possession of the prize,—ready, indeed, to rush at each other, while their friends on either side hold them back: Agamemnon, as judge, stands between them. This type seems to have been created, or at least developed, by the vase-painter A Duris vase-painting on this subject by Duris may be seen in Baumeister, , p. 29, plate 30.. But an earlier form of the same subject occurs on black-figured vases of the sixth century B.C. Here there are only the three principal figures,—Ajax, Odysseus, and Agamemnon,—and the ἀγὼν for the arms approaches still more nearly to the character of a fight. The competitors are advancing against each other with drawn swords, while Agamemnon tries to keep them apartC. Robert, , p. 217, gives a copy of this scene from a black-figured lekythos in the Berlin Museum.. The black-figured vases prove that the original literary source was not the Ὅπλων κρίσις of Aeschylus, —as the red-figured vases would have allowed us to suppose,— but some older poem. Other works of art represent the close of the contest. A relief on a sarcophagus found at OstiaFigured in Baumeister, p. 29, pl. 31. shows Odysseus seizing the arms which have just been awarded to him, while Ajax, escorted by indignant friends, is retiring, with visible fury in his eyes,—the ὄμματα ἀστράπτοντα of the See above, § 2.. The same moment is depicted on a vase in the British MuseumNo. 829: discussed by Robert in , pp. 218 ff.: Athena herself presides over the court, indicating the artist's literal interpretation of the verse in the (11. 547 παῖδες δὲ Τρώων δίκασαν καὶ Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη). On a stone in front of the goddess are seen the ψῆφοι by which the arms have just been adjudged to Odysseus,—a detail which recalls the language of Pindar and Sophocles, who both speak of the award as decided by ballot Pind. 8. 26: Soph. 449, Soph. Ai. 1135. .

The painters Parrhasius and Timanthes (c. 400 B.C.) are said to have competed at Samos in an ἀγὼν γραφικός, the subject of their pictures being Ajax and Odysseus contending for the arms Pliny, 35. 36 § 72: Aelian, 9. 11. Timanthes gained the prize; when Parrhasius said that he condoled with Ajax on having for a second time got the worst of it.. But the famous picture on this subject was by Timomachus of ByzantiumThe date of Timomachus is uncertain. Brunn (, vol. II. p. 282) would refer him to ‘the time of the Diadochi’ (i.e. , circ. 320—270 B.C.), on account of the tendencies shown in his choice and treatment of subjects. At any rate Pliny is evidently wrong in saying that Timomachus painted in the time of Julius Caesar ( 35. 40 § 30), as he already had the fame of an ‘old master’ in 70 B.C. ( Cic. 2. 4. 60.), whose work was directly inspired by Sophocles. It represented Ajax, as the poet describes him, sitting among the slaughtered cattle, and brooding on selfdestruction, in that gloomy despair which followed his frenzy Philostratus, 2. 22 § 5: see n. below on verse 346.. An epigram in the attests the vivid impression which this picture made on the beholderJacobs, vol. II. p. 648, no. 83: Αἶαν, Τιμομάχου πλέον ἢ πατρός· ἥρπασε τέχνα τὴν φύσιν. ὁ γράψας εἶδέ σε μαινόμενον, καὶ συνελυσσήθη χεὶρ ἀνέρι, καὶ τὰ κεραστὰ δάκρυα τοὺς λύπης πάντας ἔμιξε πόνους. The style is somewhat affected and obscure. ‘Ajax, Timomachus, not Telamon, is thy sire: Art has made Nature's claim her own! The painter saw thee in thy frenzy,— his hand raged with the rage of his hero, and the mingled pigments from his brush have blended all the throes of pain.’ The last words have point; for it was in portraying a conflict of emotions that Timomachus peculiarly excelled.. It was kindred in conception to another celebrated work of the same painter, Medea meditating the murder of her children. Both pictures were at Cyzicus in the early part of the first century B.C.; they were purchased by Julius Caesar, and placed in the temple of Venus Genetrix at Rome. Ovid in exile remembered both:— Utque sedet vultu fassus Telamonius iram, Inque oculis facinus barbara mater habet 2. 525 f.

The in the Capitoline Museum contains a small picture, inscribed ΑΙΑΣ ΜΑΝΙΩΔΗΣ, which probably shows the influence of Timomachus; Ajax is seated in an attitude of deep dejection, and near him lies the severed head of a ram,—a detail taken from the play of Sophocles (vv. 237 ff.)See the reproduction of the in Baumeister's , p. 716, pl. 775: the small picture of Ajax is numbered 80 in the plate.. The hero's suicide is the subject of some Etruscan vase-paintings. One of these shows the sword planted in the ground, as Sophocles describes it (v. 815)Baumeister, p. 30 b. .

The date of the is unknown; but internal Date of the play. evidence affords reasons for believing that, if not the earliest of the seven plays, it is the next oldest to the

(1) The Parodos has the form of an anapaestic marching-song (vv. 134—171), followed by a lyric ode (vv. 172—200), as in the , the , and the of Aeschylus. This simplest type of Parodos occurs in no other play of Sophocles, though that of the is akin to it.

(2) Anapaests for the Chorus are interposed in the iambic dialogue (vv. 1163—1167). The only other play of Sophocles in which this occurs is the (vv. 929—943).

These are (I think) the only clear indications of a relatively early date. Some other points, however, have been urged, and demand consideration here.

(3) It has been noted by G. WolffIn his edition of the play, p. 140 (4th ed. 1887). and others that several words and phrases in the are Aeschylean: e.g. v. 56 ῥαχίζω ( 426 etc.): 412 πόροι ἁλίρροθοι ( 367): 447 φρένες διάστροφοι ( 673): 673 λευκόπωλος ἡμέρα ( 386): 740 ὑπεσπανισμένον ( 489 etc.). Again, the epic ἦ ῥα (172, Pers. 954) occurs also in 633, but not elsewhere in Tragedy; the Doric and epic plural τοί (1404), used by Aeschylus ( 584 etc.), is not elsewhere used by Sophocles. The , it will be seen, furnishes most of these parallelismsWe may also compare 789 f., φέρων...πρᾶξιν (‘announcing his fortune’), with 248, φέρει...πρᾶγος (in a like sense): and 769, ἐπισπάσειν κλέος, with a similar use of the active ἐπέσπασεν in 477. . But such coincidences merely show that the belongs to a period when Aeschylus had a strong influence on the younger poet's style; and we have no means of setting an inferior limit to that period. In so far, then, as the language of the play has an Aeschylean stamp, it seems more accurate to say that this characteristic is entirely consonant with the hypothesis of a relatively early date than to claim it as a separate indication of such a date. With regard to the epic ἦ ῥα and τοί, it should be remembered that the play contains several phrases which show a deliberate aim at epic colouring, such as κλυτῶν ἐνάρων (177), ἑλίκεσσι βουσί, κλυτοῖς αἰπολίοις (374 f.), οὐλίῳ (933), πολύτλας (954), κοίλην κάπετον (1165), which the poet may have deemed appropriate to a subject taken from the Trojan cycle and concerned with a Homeric hero.

(4) Some critics have thought that only twelve choreutae were used in the , and infer that the play belonged to a time when Sophocles had not yet raised the number of the Chorus to fifteen Muff Chr., pp. 52, 78 ff.; and O. Hense, p. 5. Nauck adopts this view in the 8th ed. of Schneidewin's , p. 63, and n. on 892 ff.. The chief ground of this theory is the fact that verses 892—914 and 938—960 (taken together) contain twelve utterances of the Chorus. It is assumed that each utterance represents a single choreutes. But this is an assumption only; and it does not appear a probable one, when it is observed that verses 900—903, and 908—914, are passionate expressions of a feeling common to the whole Chorus, and would naturally, therefore, be given by the whole Chorus. In verses 866—878, again, the attempt to distinguish twelve parts, one for each of twelve choreutae, involves a highly arbitrary process. The mere fact of ἡμιχόρια being there employed proves nothing; for the use of hemichoria occurs in plays written at a time when the number of the tragic chorus was certainly fifteen ( Eur. 1258 ff., Eur. 93 —111, Eur. Alc. 226—232).

(5) Lastly, it has been supposed that the play was written ‘not long after the introduction of a third actorIntrod. to Schneidewin's , p. 64.,’ because three actors are on the scene together only in the prologue (Athena, Odysseus, Ajax), and at the end (Agamemnon, Teucer, Odysseus); Odysseus being silent while Ajax is present (92—117), and Teucer while Agamemnon is present (1318—1373). But it appears very unsafe to assume that these facts indicate an early and tentative stage in the use of the third actor. They may be due simply to the construction of the play and to the requirements of each dramatic situation.

As between the and the , the claim to priority would rest with the , if the form of the Parodos were the test; though the Parodos of the is also of an early type (see n. on 134). But much more weight is due to the fact that the , alone of the seven plays, rigorously adheres to the practice of Aeschylus, in never admitting the division of an iambic trimeter between two or more speakers (ἀντιλαβή). This was no trivial detail, but a general rule of composition which materially affected the character of dialogue. When Sophocles at last decided to relax that rule, the result was a marked gain in lightness and rapidity at moments when the dialogue became animated or excited. The fact that he had made this change before he wrote the seems clearly to indicate that the is later than the

Aristotle's work Title. called Διδασκαλίαι was a chronological list of tragedies and comedies produced at Athens, the list being based on official records contemporary in each case with the production. Similar works were afterwards compiled by Callimachus (c. 260 B.C.) and others. The Διδασκαλίαι of Aristotle and of Callimachus are known to have been still extant in the second century A. NowD. , we learn from the Greek Argument to the that ‘in the Didascaliae’ the play was styled simply ΑΙΑΣ See below, page 4, line 9: ἐν δὲ ταῖς διδασκαλίαις ψιλῶς ΑΙΑΣ ἀναγέγραπται .. This is conclusive as to the original title; since, whether the Didascaliae meant, be Aristotle's, or one of the later works, in any case the ultimate authority for the statement dates from the time when the play was produced. In the extant manuscripts the title is Αἴας Μαστιγοφόρος (alluding to the lash which Ajax carries in the first scene); as it is also in the citations by Zenobius ( c. 130 A.D. ), Athenaeus, and Clement of Alexandria. On the other hand, the Greek Argument states that Dicaearchus (a pupil of Aristotle) called the play Αἴαντος Θάνατος, which he could scarcely have done if the title Αἴας Μαστιγοφόρος had already obtained currency. We may infer from these facts that the epithet Μαστιγοφόρος was added by some Alexandrian scholar whose authority sufficed to establish it as a permanent part of the title. If the object had been merely, as the author of the Argument suggests, to distinguish the play from the Αἴας Λοκρός of Sophocles, Τελαμώνιος might have seemed a fitter designation; but doubtless the intention was rather to distinguish it from later dramas on the same subject, such as those of Astydamas, Carcinus and Theodectes.

Scene:—Before the tent of Ajax, at the eastern end of the Greek camp, near Cape Rhoeteum on the northern coast of the Troad. ODYSSEUS is closely examining footprints on the sandy ground. ATHENA is seen in the air (on the θεολογεῖον).

According to the rule of the Greek theatre, the side of the scene on the spectator's right represents the home-region,— in this case, that of the Greek camp. To the spectator's left is the region of the open country, stretching east and south from the camp, over the plain of Troy, towards those ‘Mysian highlands’ from which Teucer returns (v. 720). Aristotle speaks of σκηνογραφία as an invention distinctive of Sophocles ( 4: see Smith's , new ed., vol. II. p. 816). And the words in v. 4, ἔνθα τάξιν ἐσχάτην ἔχει, rather suggest that the Greek camp was somehow indicated here,—perhaps with a glimpse of the Hellespont, and of Cape Rhoeteum. It is not known whether the theatre of the fifth century B.C. had περίακτοι,—those triangular prisms on pivots, with scenery painted on each of their three faces, which served as movable side-scenes. A periaktos on the spectator's right could have been used to show the camp. Or, if this resource was not then available, the purpose may have been effected by painted hangings on the back-wall, which, in the fifth century B.C., was probably a temporary structure of wood. With regard to the change of scene after v. 814, see note on 815.