Friday, February 11, 2022

Ajax by Sophocles - Shall I not learn place and wisdom?

We have reached our first Sophocles play, Ajax, generally thought to be “early.”  Putting it before Aeschylus’s Oresteia (458 BCE) gives me the first eighteen years of Sophocles’s long career, which should be enough.  Aside from Ajax, we are missing the first thirty-two years of Sophocles.

Things have changed.  Now there are clearly three actors, outside of the chorus, with speaking parts, while the early Aeschylus plays (probably) always used just two speaking actors.  I have been struck by the number of non-speaking parts, like the grieving Tecmessa at the end of Ajax, who only contributes to the tableau because the three actors are used for other parts.  Aristotle says that the third actor is an innovation of Sophocles.  Here it is.

The skene, the structure in the middle of the stage, is definitely there now, too.  It may have been present in the Aeschylus plays we have read, but now there is no ambiguity.  There is a structure, it has doors, actors can appear on top of it, it may well support wheeled platforms.  The sophistication or gimmickry of the stage business has moved up a notch.

I would love to have a better idea of what the Greek audience saw.  Ajax, the hero described by Homer as “gigantic,” the shield of the Greek army, a warrior second only to Achilles, has gone mad as a result of losing the armor of dead Achilles to Odysseus.  Thinking that he is taking revenge on his enemies – meaning, his Greek allies, which is crazy to begin with – he instead, in a frenzy, slaughters and tortures a herd of livestock.  The play is about the perfect soldier coming to terms with his madness and shame.  With minor changes, the play could be about a good soldier who snaps under stress.  Perhaps with no changes.

Ajax first appears, near the beginning of the play, surrounded by mutilated animals, covered with their blood.  With what detail, I wonder; how much blood?  The moment of his appearance is built up to be shocking.  The audience is warned, but here he is:

AJAX: Look at this swirling tide of grief

    And the storm of blood behind it,

    Coursing around and round me.

CHORUS:  Horrible!  (20)

But how horrible?  I have no idea.

Ajax’s madness is complicated by the fact that Athena directly intervenes in events, perhaps as punishment for Ajax’s impiety and arrogance, or what I would call his individualism and humanism.  He is fool enough to think humans govern their own affairs, or at least he governs his own.

AJAX:                Don’t you know by now

    That I owe the gods no service any more?  (29)

This way well count as a “tragic flaw.”  Madness is a central epistemological issue.  However hardheaded an empiricist I might be, I know that there are people who experience reality in different ways than I do.  However “real” reality seems, there is always, logically, doubt.  Attributing this doubt to the actions of gods is perhaps just a question of definition. I love the odd detail – Sophocles is full of such touches – that the rational, pious Odysseus, who frequently speaks with his protector Athena, can never see her, while the cursed, visionary Ajax can.

Ajax has a magnificent speech in the exact center of the play that is a monument of literary irony.  The hero is planning his suicide, but telling his family and followers the opposite.

Strangely the long and countless drift of time

Brings all things forth from darkness into light

That covers them once more. Nothing so marvelous

That man can say it surely will not be –

Strong oath and iron intent come crashing down. (31-2)

What a beginning.  Every line has two meanings.

I must give way, as all dread strengths give way…

Shall not I learn place and wisdom? (32)

In death, Ajax means, but his audience hears something else.  And when he leaves, the chorus of the sailors who follow him “shudder and thrill with joy” (32).  That won’t last.


The story of the death of Ajax was for a time a popular subject for vase painting.  I’ve borrowed a remarkable example from the Getty, a shallow wine cup, which shows Tecmessa covering Ajax’s body in the bowl.  The sides of the cup show two other scenes from the story, including the voting for the armor of Achilles that launches the tragedy.  Another irony is that armor ends up at the bottom of the Mediterranean.  Nobody gets it.  All a waste, like the entire Trojan War.

I’ve stuck to the John Moore translation (University of Chicago Press), but I also read the Helen Golder and Richard Pevear version (Oxford) which was punchier and had better annotation.

Next we return to Aeschylus for Agamemnon, the beginning of the Oresteia.  If you haven’t read it, don’t miss this one.  I have the ubiquitous Robert Fagles translation at hand, but I also plan to read the Ted Hughes version.

24 comments:

  1. While Ajax is one of my favorite of the Greek tragedies, I still have a hard time with the idea that there is no free will, that absolutely everything is up to the whims of the gods. If that was an assumption behind Athenian society, how did their legal system work? Where was the accountability? "Your honors, some god must've made my client commit these crimes, who knows why, who among mere mortals could've resisted?"

    One thing that I missed the last time I read Ajax is the role of the chorus, who are all the soldiers/sailors (was there a difference?) who came to Troy with Ajax. At first they say that the rumors about Ajax are lies, spread no doubt by Odysseus. As the truth is revealed and Ajax' fate becomes predictable, the fear of the chorus that (once again) the actions of a single man in a position of power will bring about the ruin of his followers, comes to the forefront of the action. All will be lost for all of Ajax' camp. Not their fault, it is what it is, who you gonna blame, you can't blame the gods or things will just get worse, etc. I really enjoyed the chorus this time, is what I'm saying. I have not, before this go-round, been paying proper attention to the social function of the chorus in these plays.

    I also quite like the portrayals of Menelaus and Agamemnon. Big blustering buffoons. And of course the two faces of Odysseus, cowering in the first part and then claiming, for purely political reasons, to have actually admired Ajax despite their enmity. Odysseus was one slick fellow. I'm not sure what her affection for Odysseus tells us about Athena.

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  2. I enjoy the odd details as well, and love Sophocles for it.

    Free will? Oh, they had it. It just won't change anything that's fated, though. "Your honors, some god must've made my client commit these crimes, who knows why, who among mere mortals could've resisted?" That argument is coming up real soon in the Oresteia.

    I know the debate set piece at the end isn't the most exciting part of the play, but I found parts of it fascinating. You have Menelaus, a Homeric hero arguing against Homeric hero-ing. Their time has passed, and there’s no place now in a Greek city (read Athens) for individual exploits performed solely for kleos/glory. Obviously argued for Menelaus' own benefit in regard to finishing the Trojan War, but was this also a comment regarding Athens position in the period of the play's production (whether the 450s or the 440s) as it was aggressively assuming its empire mantle?

    Eh, who knows, especially since we're missing the overall arc of the three plays and where this fits in. I enjoyed it, regardless.

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  3. Isn't the chorus great? And they are deepened by their interactions with Tecmessa, working together in a hopeless cause.

    And of course the other Homeric heroes are terrific. No respect just because they're in Homer! Although it's Euripides who really hates Odysseus.

    I thought the debate over the burial became doubly fascinating given that the next Sophocles play we read is mostly a debate over a burial. We got a preview here.

    Congrats on getting a comment through. I hope the curse is broken.

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  4. This is the first of these plays I haven't finished. (Hopefully that won't be a trend - but at least the Oresteia is a reread I'm looking forward to.) I have trouble understanding why people care so much about what happens with Achilles' armor (maybe it would have helped fi I'd read The Iliad), and Ajax's response (to try and murder Menelaus and Agamemnon) is, as you say, crazy to me and makes me fairly unsympathetic to him. And, as Aristotle rightly pointed out, tragedy depends on feeling pity or at least sympathy for the hero. Whereas I mostly feel sorry for the guards of the livestock who Athena essentially had killed to protect her beloved Odysseus.

    I did enjoy the brief glimpse at the beginning of Odysseus as detective, following Ajax's trail. Somebody must have written detective stories set in the ancient world, right? That could be fun, particularly given the ideas about free will and justice that Scott and Dwight bring up.

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  5. Yes, the beginning of the play is an attack on sympathy. For a sympathetic response to return, a viewer likely has to separate the sane and insane Ajax. Or, as you say, know Ajax earlier, in The Iliad, where he is a great hero.

    The armor of Achilles is a prestigious and valuable object. Men compete to possess such things. That is all there is to that.

    At some point this year I will return to Aristotle's Poetics. Maybe I will invite people along. We can see how wrong Aristotle was. Or right, who knows.

    There are many ancient-world detective novels, most famously Steven Saylor's Roman detective, and there are Margaret Doody's Aristotle detective novels, which I should look at but which sound, unfortunately, like, you know, detective novels.

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  6. I don't think it's about the shininess of the armor. For Ajax (I like his Greek name Aias), it would have represented a minute amount of respect from the Greeks for all of the years and effort he spent fighting for them. That's reinforced in this play by how Menelaus and Agamemnon continue to disrespect him.

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  7. Achilles' armor marked him as the focal point of the strength of the Greek army. Also, it was made by a god so the symbolic aspect of possessing it goes beyond respect for a job well done. Who among the Greeks is worthy of this particular armor? What values do the Greeks hold most highly? I think there is something larger going on here when Odysseus is awarded the armor: after all, the Iliad begins with Achilles refusing to leave his tent, refusing to put on armor and fight for Menelaus' cause, because he is angry at Agamemnon. So the symbol of Greek strength passes from Achilles, who was a hero who did not respect political hierarchies, down to Ulysses, who is all politician. There is no place in the world for the likes of Ajax any more. It's much bigger than Ajax and any individual warrior, including Achilles. Maybe.

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  8. I'm with you on revisiting Aristotle's Poetics. I think a bad translation gave rise to the "tragic hero" idea, but I could be wrong.

    For some of my research I need to revisit "Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity" by J. E. Lindon, and I'm way overdue on posting about it. It's a great book and demonstrates how influential "The Iliad" was, not just on literary tradition but also warfare through the ages.

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    1. 8m new to all this, since I'd only read "Odyssey" and "Iliad" before. I think Je E Lindon's book might help me. I'm loving the plays although I feel I miss things as most of my history reading has been Roman, Medieval and Tudor, and some later. Somehow the Greeks are a step-up from the Roman's.

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  9. Yes, Ajax, as the greatest warrior in the Greek army now that Achilles is gone, should have the armor by merit. He misjudges and mishandles the politics of the prize. At a more mythic level, the days of strength-based warlordism are over.

    The parallels with the sulky fit of Achilles are so interesting.

    An irony is that gigantic Ajax could not have actually worn the armor of Achilles.

    I hope everyone has been enjoying this week's detailed, grisly murder of Agamemnon.

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  10. My impression is not that "tragic flaw" is a bad translation but that hamartia is a difficult word that requires a lot of interpretation.

    If I understand my own schedule correctly, we should do Poetics in the fall, once we are properly reacquainted with the plays. All right, let's do that, let's. Fundamental stuff.

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  11. The armor is just the Mcguffin.

    This is aspect which struck me while reading it. The audience's sympathies are with Ajax, who has been cheated by democracy and its concomitant devious rhetoric. Of course, Agamemnon and Menelaos as the representatives of legality and democratic government must also be something of a joke.

    (Whatever happened to Diomedes? He's a major Greek warrior in The Iliad, but doesn't appear anyway (I don't think) in Greek tragedy. - He was also king of Argos, which may seem problematic for those of you reading the Agamemnon).

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  12. Hey, what did happen to Diomedes? (looking things up) Oh that's right he moves to Italy where he founds cities and has exciting adventures, and is in the Aeneid.

    Robert Fagles explains the use of Argos by Aeschylus as an audience-flattering retcon. Argos had captured and razed Mycenae just a few years earlier, and Argos was now an ally of Athens, so Argos it is.

    I have a lot of sympathy for Ajax after he comes out of his fit. He is like a depressive who has done something shameful during a manic phase - blown his family saving on cryptocurrency or something like that. Such people are at very high risk of suicide. The pleading of Tecmessa and the chorus is not so far from family members trying to talk the poor guy out of it.

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  13. No, I think all of them (Ajax, Menelaus, and Agamemnon) represent a passing historical epoch of warlords and loose affiliations of city states to which Athens is bidding a less than fond farewell. The old forms of heroism give rise to tragedies like Ajax', and petty squabbling among the heroes. The age of Achilles is over, thank the gods.

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  14. Soon enough, the Athenians will create their own new kinds of tragedies.

    Which reminds me, addressing Clare up above - the Greek historians are magnificent. It would be a good idea, although I am not doing it, to read Thucydides, especially, alongside the plays, maybe once we get to Euripides.

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    1. Thank you for the suggestion. I havd a unread copy of the Landmark edition. I shall find it tomorrow.

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    2. Sorry for the typo, this tablet is playing up.

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    3. Outstanding. Thucydides is so good, and Euripides sometimes responds directly to current events. As far as I can tell, he invented the protest play, and by luck at least one survived for us to read.

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  15. Yeah the experiment in geopolitics works out really well, doesn't it?

    Thucydides is great. Absolutely worth reading.

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  16. I'm always up for re-reading the historians, even if it's just dipping in a little here and there. They are so good.

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  17. We're going to need a little Thucydides when we get to certain Euripides and Aristophanes plays.

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  18. Himadri on Aias.

    Please go over and help him interpret. Interpreting is not my strength.

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