Sophocles Ajax 842

ed. Lewis Campbell

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πρὸς τῶν ᾿Ατρειδῶν ὡς διόλλυμαι τάλας.

Ajax. Sophocles. ed. Lewis Campbell. Oxford. 1879.

Current edition Experimental

Greek (Lewis Campbell, 1879) (OCR draft) (Greek) (Greek (Lewis Campbell, 1879))

Provisional text from uncorrected OCR; expect errors.

Editions (3)
Αἴας μαστιγοφόρος First1KGreek (Sophocles. Sophoclis Aiax. Lobeck Christian, editor. Berlin: Weidmann, 1866.) — 865-936 focus
Αἴας First1KGreek (Sophocles. Sophoclis Fabulae. Pearson, Alfred Chilton, editor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924.) — 879-960 focus
Greek (F. Storr, 1912) (OCR draft) Experimental (Greek (F. Storr, 1912)) — 879-960 focus
Translations (2)
German (J. J. C. Donner, 1875; OCR review) (OCR draft) Experimental (German (J. J. C. Donner, 1875; OCR review)) — 866 focus
Der Mühe schafft die Mühe Müh!
Wo, wo,
Wo betrat ich nicht den Pfad?
Und nirgendwo beut sichre Kunde mir ein Ort.
Vernimm!
835
Wieder hör' ich einen Schall.
Wir sind es, wir Genossen eurer Meeresfahrt.
Wie steht es!
(eintretend)
English (Sir Richard Jebb, 1904) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Sir Richard Jebb, 1904)) — 879-960 focus

Commentary

Commentary (R. C. Jebb) (OCR draft) (Commentary (R. C. Jebb))

mvp-comment-488-1 κάκιστα καὶ πανωλέθρους 1

mvp-comment-488-2 The last two of these four verses are certainly spurious, as three things show.

mvp-comment-488-3 (1) The poet would not have made the dying Ajax pray that the Atreidae may die ‘at the hands of their offspring,’ unless there had been some legend that they so died. But, according to the current mythology, Agamemnon was slain by his wife and her paramour, while Menelaüs and Helen passed, without dying, to Elysium ( Od. 4. 561 ). It is only in later times that we meet with the story of Menelaüs and Helen having been sacrificed by Iphigeneia in the land of the Tauri ( Ptolemy Heph. 4 , cp. Roscher, Lex. p. 1951 ): a myth which the author of these verses may have had in view. Odysseus, indeed, was slain by Telegonus; but he does not come into account here, unless we make the improbable change of

Ἀτρειδῶν
to
Ἀχαιῶν
in 838. [As to the double sense of
αὐτοσφαγής
, with ref. to one who is slain (1) by himself, (2) by a kinsman, see on Ant. 56
αὐτοκτονοῦντε
.]

mvp-comment-488-4 (2) These two verses confuse the construction, since

ὥσπερ εἰσορῶσ’ ἐμέ
( sc.
ξυναρπασθέντα
) refers to what precedes: while
τὼς
in 841 refers to
ὥσπερ
.

mvp-comment-488-5 (3) The form

φίλιστος
occurs nowhere else, except as a proper name.

mvp-comment-488-6

τώς
is not elsewhere found in Soph. or Eur. : it is, however, used by Aesch. , not only in lyrics ( Aesch. Th. 484 , Suppl. 69, 670, 691), but once, at least, in a trimeter, Th. 637
ἢ ζῶντ’ ἀτιμαστῆρα τὼς ἀνδρηλάτην
. We should not, then, insist on
τώς
as a mark of spuriousness: and
ὀλοίατο
is, of course, free from objection ( O. T. 1274
γνωσοίατο
n.). But the case against 841 f. seems conclusive without them.

mvp-comment-488-7 A more difficult question is whether vv. 839, 840 are also spurious. The schol. in L on v. 841 is as follows:—

τὼς αὐτοσφαγεῖς
:
ταῦτα νοθεύεσθαί φασιν ὑποβληθέντα πρὸς σαφήνειαν τῶν λεγομένων
. As the lemma,
τὼς αὐτοσφαγεῖς
, clearly indicates,
ταῦτα
refers only to the two verses 841 f., and not (as Dindorf and others have assumed) to all the four verses 839—842. The surmise was, says the scholiast, that vv. 841 f. were added ‘to make the meaning clearer’; i.e., to explain the elliptical phrase,
ὥσπερ εἰσορῶσ’ ἐμέ
. Such a surmise itself shows that vv. 839, 840 were believed to be older than 841 f. It is indeed plain that all four verses are not by the same author. The incoherent construction noticed above, under (2), was possible for an interpolator whose attention was fixed on
ὥσπερ εἰσορῶσ’ ἐμέ
, but hardly for one who was forging vv. 839—842 as a whole. If, then, all four verses are condemned, we must assume two independent interpolations.

mvp-comment-488-8 I incline to think that the two verses 839 and 840 are genuine; because, otherwise, the imprecation on the

πάνδημος στρατός
(844) would follow too abruptly on v. 838. The prayer for the destruction of his chief foes, uttered in 839 f., leads up to the more sweeping denunciation of the Greek army.

Commentary (Lewis Campbell, 1879) (OCR draft) (Commentary (Lewis Campbell, 1879)) focus

815-865. mvp-comment-530-1 The scene is changed to a wooded place ( infr. 892) not far from the camp ( infr. 874-8), where Ajax is disclosed, somewhat retired, but so that both he and the projecting point of the sword which he has planted in the ground, are visible to the spectators.