Odysseus – You have come opportunely; because as in the past, so in the future it is your hand that steers me. (36-7)
Odysseus – How could he dare such a thing? What gave him confidence? (46)
Athena – I urged him on and drove him into a cruel trap….I will show this madness openly to you also, so that you may tell all the Argives what you have seen. (60 & 66-7)
Athena – Will you not be quiet, and not show yourself a coward? (75)
Ajax – Hail, Athena! hail, daughter of Zeus! How loyally have you stood by me! Yes, I shall honour you with golden offerings from my booty to thank you for this catch…. I have a right to boast, and I shall not deny it! (91-3 & 96)
Athena – Do not so torture the poor man!
Ajax – In all other matters, Athena, I salute you; but that man shall pay this penalty and no other.
Athena – Well, since this is your pleasure, the action is in your power! Do not hold your hand, do not stop at anything you have in mind!
Ajax – I go to work! And this I say to you, always stand by me and fight with me thus! (111-117)
Odysseus – I pity him in his misery, though he is my enemy, not thinking of his fate, but my own; because I see that all of us who live are nothing but ghosts, or a fleeting shadow. (121-6)
Chorus – Such are the whispered words which Odysseus is putting together and carrying to the ears of all, and he is most persuasive;… (148-150)
Chorus – …a godsent sickness must have come upon you; but may Zeus and Phoebus avert the evil rumour of the Argives! But if the great kings and he of the worthless line of Sisyphus are trumping up charges and spreading false stories, do not, do not, my lord, remain thus in your huts by the sea and win an evil name! (185-191)
Tecmessa – (quoting Ajax) “Woman, silence makes a woman beautiful.” (293)
Tecmessa – …at last with difficulty [Ajax] came to his senses; and when he gazed at the room filled with ruin he struck his head and uttered a loud cry, then fell among the fallen corpses of the slaughtered sheep and sat there, grasping his hair and tearing it with his nails…. And he at once lamented with dreadful cries, such as I had never before heard from him. For he always used to teach that such weeping was the mark of a cowardly and spiritless man;… (305-310 & 317-320)
Tecmessa – For such men are won over by the words of friends. (330)
Ajax – (of Odysseus) …filthiest trickster of the army, how you must be laughing in your delight! (381-2)
Ajax – …daughter of Zeus, the mighty goddess, tortures me to death! Where can one escape to? Where can I go and remain? If my great deeds perish, friends, near to these
Ajax – O streams of Scamander…no longer shall you look upon a man – I shall utter a mighty boast! – such as no other of the army that Troy has seen come from the land of Hellas! (418-426)
AIAΣ – Alas! [Aiai] Who ever would have thought that my name would come to harmonise with my sorrows? (430-1)
Ajax – Yet so much I think I well know, that if Achilles were alive and were to award the prize of valour in a contest for his own arms, no other would receive them but I. (441-4)
Ajax – But am I to go to the Trojan wall, challenge them all single-handed, achieve some feat, and at last perish? No, in that way I would give pleasure, I think, to the sons of Atreus. That cannot be! (466-470)
Tecmessa – For on the day when you perish and by your death abandon me, believe that on that day I shall be seized with violence by the Argives together with your son and shall have the treatment of a slave. (496-9)
Ajax – And my arms shall not be set before the Achaeans by any umpire of contests, nor by him who has ruined me;… (572-3)
Ajax – It is not the way of a clever doctor to chant incantations over a pain that needs surgery. (581-2)
Ajax – I feel pity at leaving her a widow and my son an orphan near enemies. But I shall go to the meadows by the shore where I can wash myself, so that I can clean off the dirt upon me and escape the grievous anger of the goddess. I shall come to where I can find untrodden ground and conceal this sword of mine, most hated of all weapons, digging a hole in the ground where none can see it, but let the darkness of Hades guard it down below. For since I received this gift from Hector, the deadliest of my enemies, never have I had any good thing from the Argives. No, the saying of mortals is true, that the gifts of enemies are no gifts and bring no profit. (650-665)
Ajax – …and perhaps you shall learn that, even though now I am unfortunate, I have been preserved. (690-2)
Messenger – …every single man of them assailed him with taunts this way and that, calling him the brother of the madman who had plotted against the army, and declaring that they would not be content till he was dead, mangled to death with stones. (724-8)
Messenger – (Ajax’ words) “Father, together with the gods even one who amounts to nothing may win victory; but I am confident that I can grasp this glory even without them.” (767-9)
Messenger – (Ajax’ words) “Queen, stand by the other Argives; where I am the enemy shall never break through.” (774-5)
Teucer – …now that I can see [he says] I am stricken to death! / Alas! Come, uncover him, so that I may see the whole horror!” (998-1003)
Menelaus – I shall depart; it would be disgraceful if anyone learned that I was chastising with words when I could use force.
Teucer – Be off, the, for for me too it is utterly disgraceful to listen to a futile fellow speaking foolish words. (1159-62)
Teucer – Boy, come here and, standing close by, clasp as a suppliant the father who begot you. Sit there in supplication, holding a lock of mine and one of hers and thirdly one of your own, a store of implements of supplication! And if any of the army tries to drag you by force away from this corpse, may that man perish out of the earth without burial,… (1171-7)
Teucer – Do you not know that the father of your father, Pelops, was by origin a barbarous Phrygian? And that Atreus, your parent, set before his brother a most impious meal, the flesh of his children? (1291-1294)
Odysseus – Listen, then! I beg you not to venture to cast this man out ruthlessly, unburied. Violence must not so prevail on you that you trample justice under foot! For me too he was once my chief enemy in the army, ever since I became the owner of the arms of Achilles; but though he was such in regard to me, I would not so far fail to do him honour as to deny that he was the most valiant man among the Argives, except Achilles. (1332-1340)
Agamemnon – Remember what sort of man is the recipient of your kindness.
Odysseus – This man was an enemy, but he was noble.
Agamemnon – What is it you will do? Have you such respect for the corpse of an enemy?
Odysseus – His excellence weighs more with me than his enmity.
Agamemnon – That is what inconsistent people are like.
Odysseus – In truth many people are now friends and later enemies.
Agamemnon – Do you approve of making friends of such people?
Odysseus – It is not my way to approve of a rigid mind.
Agamemnon – On this day you will make us seem cowards. (1354-1362)
Teucer – But I am reluctant, seed of Laertes, to allow you to set your hand to this grave, for fear of doing a thing displeasing to the dead. (1393-5)
Chorus – Mortal can judge of many things when they have seen them; but before seeing it no man can prophesy what his fortune shall be in the future. (1418-1420)
Ajax Bibliography:
M.W. Blundell Helping Friends and Harming Enemies (Cambridge: CUP, 1989)
D. J. Bradshaw "The Ajax myth and the polis: old values and new" in D.C. Pozzi and J. M. Wickersham (ed.) Myth and the Polis (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991) 99-125.
P. Burian "Supplication and hero-cult in Sophocles’ Ajax" Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies13 (1972) 151-6.
G. Crane "Ajax, the unexpected and the deception speech" Classical Philology 85 (1990) 89-101.
J.A.S. Evans "A reading of Sophocles' Ajax" Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 38 (1991) 69-85.
E.P. Garrison Groaning Tears: Ethical and Dramatic Aspects of Suicide in Greek Tragedy (NY: Kinderhook, 1995).
A. Henrichs "The tomb of Aias and the prospect of hero cult in Sophokles" Classical Antiquity 12 (1993) 165-80.
P. Holt "Ajax’s Burial in Early Greek Epic" American Journal of Philology 113 (1992) 319-31.
G.M. Kirkwood "Homer and Sophocles’ Ajax", in M.J. Anderson (ed.) Classical Drama and its Influence (London & NY: Barnes & Noble, 1965) 51-70.
Stuart Lawrence, "Ancient ethics, the heroic code, and the morality of Sophocles’ Ajax", Greece and Rome 52 (2005), 18-33.
G. Ley "A scenic plot of Sophocles’ Ajax and Philoctetes" Eranos 86 (1988) 85-115.
J.R. March "Sophocles’ Ajax: the death and burial of a hero" Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 38 (1991-1993) 1-36.
J. Moore "The dissembling speech of Ajax" Yale Classical Studies 25 (1977) 47-66.
D. O’Higgins ‘The second best of the Achaeans’ Hermathena 147 (1989) 43-56.
K. Ormond, "Silent by convention: Sophocles’ Tecmessa" American Journal of Philology 117 (1996) 37-64.
M. Sicherl "The tragic issue in Sophocles’ Ajax" Yale Classical Studies 25 (1977) 67-98.
O. Taplin "Yielding to forethought", Arktouros (Knox Festschrift, 1979) 122-9.
G. Zanker "Sophocles’ Ajax and the heroic values of the Iliad" Classical Quarterly 42 (1992) 20-25.
