Ajax 1-200 a new start

Greek Learning Greek
1

Although there are some good things on both the previous Ajax threads neither for different reasons are easy to follow.

ΟΔ. Ποίαισι τόλμαις ταῖσδε καὶ φρενῶν θράσει; 46

I am not sure how this line works even with FInglass (“What was this daring and boldness of mind with which he acted?”). F. explains this "The modal dative "describes the circumstances which accompany the action (Moorhouse 90). Odysseus effectively asks “how did he go about it?” with the datives conveying amazement and disapproval. ταῖσδε looks back to Athena’s last statement confirming Ajax’s extraordinary decision to attack the army. I sort of see how it works but would welcome some clarification. I have never before heard of datives expressing amazement and disapproval. (I suppose disapproval is linked to dative of disadvantage?)

ΑΘ. Καὶ δὴ ’πὶ δισσαῖς ἦν στρατηγίσιν πύλαις. 49

I think there is ambiguity here (F. " δισσαῖς στρατηγίδες πύλαις ῾the twofold relating-to-generals gates" :smiley: ) But the ambiguity is resolved at 57 δισσοὺς Ἀτρείδας αὐτόχειρ κτείνειν ἔχων. I guess we have to settle for a definitive (prosaic) translation (gates of the two commanders) but keep in mind that hearing this line and waiting for further information for it to be resolved is a different experience.

καὶ πρός τε ποίμνας ἐκτρέπω σύμμικτά τε 53
λείας ἄδαστα βουκόλων φρουρήματα·

(F. “and I diverted him against the flocks and the various beasts of the spoil guarded by the herdsmen and not yet distributed” (Lloyd-Jones adapted)

I found this difficult although the sense seems clear. F. suggests taking φρουρήματα (something guarded) with twin genitives one defining (λείας) and one possessive (βουκόλων). I didnt find the LSJ definition of βουκόλος, ὁ, “tending kine” very helpful. At least the Brill scores by putting herdsman. I spent a lot of time trying to work this out and am still not satisfied.

…κἀδόκει μὲν ἔσθ’ ὅτε 56
δισσοὺς Ἀτρείδας αὐτόχειρ κτείνειν ἔχων,
ὅτ’ ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλον ἐμπίτνων στρατηλατῶν.

(F. “And now he thought he was killing the two Atridae with his own hand as he gripped them, now this general, now that, as he fell upon them”)

I found this puzzling but F. was helpful with the “ἔσθ’ ὅτε…ἔσθ’ ὅτε” construction with the second limb understood. F. points out that the polyptoton “ἄλλοτ’ ἄλλον” "further divides the sentence and [conveys] the multiplicity of A.'s targets.

Ἐγὼ δὲ φοιτῶντ’ ἄνδρα μανιάσιν νόσοις 59
ὤτρυνον, εἰσέβαλλον εἰς ἕρκη κακά.

F. notes " Verbal asyndeton at the start of the trimeter [60], with the second verb longer (and more violent) than the first, mimetically expresses Athena’s vigour." Certainly Ajax stands no chance against her.

Κἄπειτ’ ἐπειδὴ τοῦδ’ ἐλώφησεν πόνου, 61

Certainly πόνου is more ironic than φόνου in the TLG.

This post is getting a bit too long. I didnt see much of a problem from here until 88 where Athena calls out Ajax. I did wonder whether the doric " Ἀθάνα" in 74 was for metrical reasons.

There are a large number of verbs connected with seeing. Obviously delusion, madness, and trusting one’s senses is an emerging theme. I know one is not supposed to “like” Gods but Athena is pretty terrifying here. Laughing at one’s enemies is not my idea of the sweetest of pleasures ( Οὔκουν γέλως ἥδιστος εἰς ἐχθροὺς γελᾶν; 79). I am not sure I fully understand the sense of “the same eyes” in 84 ( Πῶς; εἴπερ ὀφθαλμοῖς γε τοῖς αὐτοῖς ὁρᾷ. ).

Hylander can you fit 86 into your new Tragedy ( Γένοιτο μεντἂν πᾶν θεοῦ τεχνωμένου.)

Finally Finglass is very dismissive of the idea that this is a political play. πόλις is only mentioned twice in the text. He disagrees with Goldhill’s argument that “Tragedy’s politics is to be found ..in the searing exploration of the basic elements of democratic principle.” I am sure we will come back to this. My sympathies are with Goldhill but we shall see.

2

Just a couple of quick notes.

To me, this use of the dative is close to an instrumental, no matter how acceptable such terminology is. A dative of disadvantage is something entirely different. Take 39 ὡς ἔστιν ἀνδρὸς τοῦδε τἄργα ταῦτά σοι: σοι is a dative of advantage, or disadvantage, according to whether what we’re dealing with is pleasant or unpleasant “for you”.

But whether is Doric or not doesn’t change the meter: the first α is short, the other two are long.

Whether it’s a political play or not, I haven’t read Finglass very closely. But it seems to me as well that it’s not. Perhaps “psychological” is an anachronism, but I see many points of contact with Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, with what Breivik in did in Norway a few years back, what now happened in Orlando etc. The play proves, I think, that has there has always been such tragedies (the true sense of the word!). Well, the Crime and Punishment are perhaps less apt parallels.

I’ve reached now the end of the first episode, about line 600. Perhaps we should rename this thread something like “Ajax lines 1-200, a new start”, so that it doesn’t get too big?

3

We’re starting over for the 3rd time?! Can we please make this the last?

  1. It’s not the dative but the ποιαις (rather than plain τίσιν) that conveys “amazement and disapproval” or whatever. Cf. e.g. Homer’s ποῖον τὸν μῦθον ἔειπες; The datives are ordinary enough.

  2. I called it a “portmanteau” kind of expression earlier. The individual components sort of blend rather than functioning individually. Similar things in Pindar and elsewhere in tragedy. Moorhouse any help? Here the first of the two adjectives applies more to the second than to the noun.

  3. Doesn’t seem too difficult once you realize the two genitives are mutually independent and perform different functions. I’d have labeled βουκολων a subjective genitive myself, given φρουρηματα, but of course possessive too. By classical times βουκολος is the regular word for a cowherd; I guess the LSJ definition is due to its being an adjectival formation and its accompanying a noun in early Greek.

  4. Αθανα scans the same as Ionic Αθηνη and Attic Αθηνα. Why tragedy uses the Doric form even in spoken iambics is a mystery to me, but apparently it does.

Athena. Even her best buddy Odysseus recoils at her treatment of Ajax and her despicable attitude. She’s inhuman. As gods by definition are. But is that any excuse? Big moral issues here, as often in Euripides. Gods are not good role models.

84 “the same eyes” as he’s always had: when he sees Odysseus he’ll go bananas. It gives Sophocles a chance to explain why Ajax doesn’t see him.

Political play? How can it not be political? Sounds like Finglass is overreacting. An Oxford v. Cambridge thing? Hugh Lloyd-Jones once exclaimed to me, in his inimitable way, “Semiotics is S**T.” (The bleeping reflects Textkit’s sensibilities, not his.) He was an admirable interpreter of Sophocles, even so.

4

In all fairness to Athena, we later learn that her hostility to Ajax is not unmotivated. Ajax is a very ambivalent figure in this drama. He’s arrogant and his suicide comes across, for me at least, as a supremely selfish and irresponsible act. As long as he’s alive, he’s a self-centered, narcissistic, and even deceitful, drama queen with no regard for his family or others to whom he owes responsibilities. Only after his death do we learn about his good qualities, from an unlikely source.

5

I haven’t read Finglass’s introduction yet, or at least not entirely. But I wonder what constitutes a political play? I’ve read the Ajax about halfway now, and it all seems to be about one selfish, irresponsible person. The fact is that the original performance must have been attended by a large fraction of the free Athenian male society, so there’s no question it was a communal event – but in addition to that, what do you consider political in the content of the play?

It seems to me that in many modern mass shootings the perpetrators purport to have a political aim, while in the event it’s the same egoism and utmost irresponsibility over and over again. Psychologically Ajax seems to have a lot in common with these disturbed people. “Don’t be a narcissistic drama queen” is hardly enough to constitute a political message, but would you argue then that the political dimension of the play consists in showing the disastrous consequences of this sort of behavior, for the individual and the society alike?

I’ve never had the patience to find out what semiotics actually is, but I suspect that if I ever did, my judgment wouldn’t be very different from Lloyd-Jones’s…

6

Paul and Seneca, the play is political in that it takes place in the context of a specific political and social framework. I don’t think it can be reduced to a specific political “message,” but it certainly illustrates the interaction of individuals within that framework–in that sense, it is very political.

But don’t judge the play before you’ve read the whole thing. The play is only a little more than half-way over when Ajax commits suicide, and the rest of the play takes a very different, and surprising, and, in the end, satisfying and even beautiful, dramatic turn. (mwh: sorry to be belle-lettristic about this.) Don’t get up and leave the theater before the end.

I think we should definitely resist trying to find a reductive “message” in this drama, which portrays individuals interacting with one another–this isn’t agitprop. I suspect it will turn out to be more political than Paul thinks, but in an entirely different way than Seneca expects.

Another thought: Ajax and Philoctetes are plays that don’t end in bleak despair–Philoctetes even has “happy ending” (even if some find it contrived–I don’t, but we can discuss that after we finish Ajax and move on to Philoctetes). They will force you to rethink what a “tragedy” is–to divorce the drama term from the everyday word “tragedy.” “Serious play” might be a better definition in the case of these plays. And while Ajax is definitely a flawed individual whose flaws are balanced by good qualities, the play isn’t at all illustrative of the standard Aristotelian script of how a good man is brought low by a “tragic flaw.” Neither is Philoctetes.

7

Thanks for all the comments. I read the play several years ago with Jebb’s commentary, unfortunately I cannot find any of my notes and in any case I am a bit more thorough these days in trying to tease out the text. I am typing notes and vocabulary as I go which rather slows down the whole process but at least it wont be a pile of paper thats get lost or I cant read. (No doubt it will all be lost in a crash although saved to Google drive).

I certainly agree Hylander that we must resist the urge to find a reductive meaning. Clearly the text is polyvalent, thats what makes it so intriguing. The only reason I mentioned Finglass’ view was that a) I thought the attack on Golding seemed almost personal and b) Golding’s general approach to Tragedy is one I have a lot of sympathy with.

I am intrigued Hylander that you have a clearer idea of my expectations than I do! I am trying to approach it with an open mind.

Paul I think that the way you characterise Ajax’s motivation isnt one that I see in the play. Many (all?) of the attitudes taken in the play dont align with contemporary western values. Why would they? How could they? Perhaps a political reading is to see it against Sophocles’s contemporary Athens (even if this might be a bit circular using the play to construct that background), but there are others. We can return to this when more of the text has been read together then I think it will be evident what “political” might mean.

Context of production can mean everything. Anouilh’s play Antigone was allowed, astonishingly, to be performed in nazi occupied Paris. Clearly plays can be viewed in completely opposite ways at the same time.

8

I am intrigued Hylander that you have a clearer idea of my expectations than I do! I am trying to approach it with an open mind.

Seneca, without intending to be offensive or confrontational, I was basing my idea of your expectations on this, which I honestly think you will come to recognize isn’t apposite to this play:

I am interested in a political interpretation of the play. How heroic values and extraordinary men can be accommodated or incorporated within the democratic polis. Do those that cannot change have to perish?

And I do think that Paul’s assessment of Ajax and his motivation isn’t far from the mark. Ajax isn’t a sympathetic character, at least not until his suicide, before we learn more about him–he’s motivated by arrogance, he has tried to assassinate the leaders of the Greek expedition out of personal jealousy, and he’s deaf to the plight his suicide will bring to Tecmessa and Eurysaces, his wife and son. He’s a clear, clinically diagnosed case of narcissistic personality disorder.

9

Semiotics was an illegitimate child of structuralism (literary theory) which was an illegitimate child of structuralism (linguistics). Literary theory shows a tendency to adopt already discredited ideas from other disciplines and perpetuate a zombie-like shadow of the already defunct original framework. I observed a recent example of this where an Italian Hebrew Poetry scholar was getting all exited about Sigmund Freud. This sort of thing goes in waves. Generations come along who find value in things previous generations have discarded.

RE: Ajax the Psycho

I had a hard time getting through the greek text of Ajax. Alternating between being annoyed and boredom. The honor-shame cultural framework which drives Ajax is IMHO unhealthy. Ajax was too much of the high school football jock to hold my attention. Electra on the other hand was fascinating. A proto-feminist who harbored homicidal hatred for her mother. I recall vaguely E. Vandiver saying that family members were obligated to avenge the murder of their father. But Electra appears to be driven by her own demons.

10

Isn’t semiotics defined as what Umberto Eco studied? :slight_smile:

This is from Le bon usage (quatorzième édition):

»On appelle sémiologie l’étude des divers systèmes de signes, des divers codes par lesquels se fait la communication. L’étude du langage est donc une partie de la sémiologie. Certains, cependant, inverseraient les termes, considérant la sémiologie comme une partie de la linguistique. D’autres encore excluraient le langage de la sémiologie.

»Sémiotique, venu de l’anglais, est tantôt un synonyme de sémiologie et tantôt en est distingué, mais de divers façons. Souvent il concerne la théorie générale de la signification, telle que celle-ci se manifeste, non seulement dans le langage proprement dit, mais aussi dans les œuvres d’art, dans les rites religieux, dans le droit, etc.»

11

Right. Just now I reached over and pulled Johnathan Culler’s Ferdinand de Saussure 2nd Ed. 1986 off the shelf. I don’t see Eco in the index. :slight_smile:


RE: Structuralism being dead, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Faulkner.

From a recent paper[1] on Coptic Grammar:

In modern linguistics the finite vs. non-finite > opposition > relates to the sentence
level rather than the relations within the sentence.

[1] Reconsidering the Categorial Status of the Coptic Suffix and Conjugation Base* BARBARA EGEDI, Eötvös Loránd University, (date?? after 2004).

12

Hylander I dont find your posts either offensive or confrontational. :smiley:

Yes I dont resile from what I said before. And what I meant by it was how can we read the play against the background of Sophocles and the democratic polis.

mwh said in response to it:

Naturally people like Ajax can’t be accommodated within the democratic polis, when they couldn’t even be accommodated within the archaic distinctly non-democratic society portrayed by Homer and Sophocles.

This is perhaps a cheap answer to an important (Knox-influenced?) question, which I would reconfigure simply as How to interpret the Ajax?, and I hope we can all engage with it. But maybe we should read the play first?

Well I dont agree with mwh either but we can deal with out disagreements later. I didnt reply because the other thread was hijacked but we might as well have his quote here too. It all depends crucially on what is meant by accommodation within the polis. Incorporation into the polis can be symbolic as I think it is here with the dead Ajax, or Oedipus in O. at Coloneus Polynices in Antigone (ok maybe thats stretching my theme!) etc.

What is at issue is a set of heroic values. I think Sophocles uses Ajax as a peg on which to pin those values which he then examines, tests to destruction. I think it goes down the wrong track to think of Ajax as a character with any connexion to real life (whatever that might mean) and in need of psychoanalysis. I know others (the majority) look at things differently but surely there is space for other ways of looking at it. I am not saying that there is no place for psychoanalysis!

13

I think Sophocles uses Ajax as a peg on which to pin those values which he then examines, tests to destruction.

I don’t think Sophocles uses Ajax as a peg for anything except Ajax. Sophocles’ Ajax is not a set of values, he’s a human individual (or a theatrical representation of a human individual) who is a mixture of both admirable and reprehensible qualities. Sophocles doesn’t represent Ajax’s selfish and solipsistic arrogance–the primary character trait on display up to his suicide–as an essential part of heroic values. (In fact, we later learn of his impiety, which is definitely not a part of heroic values.) But his irresponsible arrogance certainly is an essential part of who Ajax is as an individual.

I don’t think Sophocles intended to use the play as a laboratory to put a certain set of values to a test. We don’t see Ajax’s self-destruction evolve from an origin in an set of values that he somehow exemplifies–we just witness the destruction itself as it unfolds over a brief period of time. (And it’s not Ajax who gets incorporated into the community at the end, it’s his dead body.)

14

You make good points. When i say “Sophocles uses” its slipshod for “I read the play as”. I dont mean Ajax embodies all heroic values and he obviously doesn’t display them consistently, but he does exhibit extreme ideas about honour and how it is possible to live (or not) when one has been dishonoured which are then contested.

Whatever Sophocles may have intended, Tragedy as an examination of ideas to destruction is certainly a possible way of looking at it. In most Tragedies I can think the protagonists end up a victim in part at least of their world view.

I think that the burial of Ajax has symbolic value and does represent an incorporation (em(body)ment?). But no doubt we will come back to all this.

You are right to draw attention to the assumptions I have been making and challenge my claim to have an open mind. I hope however that I am willing to be persuaded by Sophocles text and your arguments. I know that we agree that this is a great play. I was knocked sideways by "Θανόντες ἤδη τἄμ’ ἀφαιρείσθων ὅπλα. " Although a helpless plaything of Athena (aren’t we all?) there is something both admirable in Ajax’s strength and pitiable in his delusion (and not just because of Athena’s spells).

15

An incident that happened in Finland a couple of years back: A boy, about eighteen years old, was spending the evening with his friends. For kicks, he had a little wrestling match with one his friends and lost. He kept company to rest for some time, sulking, until he went home, took his father’s hunting rifles and came back to town. He hid on the roof of a building and finally started shooting completely at random at people in a night club. Two people died and several were seriously wounded. According to the media, he was known to have issues with his impulse control already before this incident.

See any connexion? I didn’t mean Ajax needs psychoanalysis. What I mean that there’s an emerging pattern in these incidents independent of the cultural setting, even if it takes different forms of expression according to it. We might say that Ajax has narcissistic personality disorder, with perhaps hints of antisocial and borderline personality disorders, but Sophocles didn’t think in those terms, and of course he didn’t mean that Ajax was in need of psychoanalysis, to which he would have been quite resistant anyway, given the extreme rigidity of his personality. (To think that personality traits can constitute an illness is of course an anachronism, but even Sophocles calls Ajax’ temporary madness a sickness – we should maybe call it “reactive psychosis”? :slight_smile: ). Ajax does have connexion to real life; you could simply pick up the DSM IV and read an accurate description of him. He’s real, that’s all.

So, what I wanted to say is that I don’t think any particular “heroic values” are very relevant to understanding why Ajax wanted to attack the other chieftains. What these young men, ancient and modern, have in common is reacting in an extremely excessive manner to a perceived threat to their social status. Or in other cases perhaps to a perceived lack of social status.

But let me add that I too am skeptical of the fashion of seeing narcissists everywhere. Don’t like your boss? Had an ugly divorce? Blame narcissism!

16

I meant my expert psychoanalytic diagnosis of “narcissistic personality disorder” for Ajax as an anachronistic joke. But still . . . Ajax definitely needed anger management counseling.

17

Paul you make interesting points and your way of imaging the play could make a stimulating production. I especially like the idea of Ajax being young. In my imagination all of these characters are immeasurably old which I suppose says something about my psyche.

I dont think “anything” can be divorced from its “cultural setting” because thats what “things” are. I think everything is determined culturally. Without wishing to bore everybody one of the great problems of reading is how we can figure texts as other and yet similar. As you put this dilemma Sophocles “didn’t think in those terms” (“narcissistic personality disorder, with perhaps hints of antisocial etc”) and yet you find this in the text implying that “narcissistic personality disorder” is something invariant through time. I am not sure this is a claim that could be substantiated.

18

No point in discussing whether Ajax meets the DSM IV criteria for narcissistic personality disorder or not… It’s impossible and irrelevant. The reason I brought this up is that I think the events in the play (as far as I’ve read it) are realistic and relevant (to a point) even in today’s world. It’s not just about a “heroic code” of the past. (Besides, the personality traits that constitute the different personality disorders are present in everybody, in varying proportions. They are simply the very ingredients of our personalities. It’s when someone has a particular trait in excess that it constitutes a problem. We can say someone is narcissistic (or obsessive-compulsive) without diagnosing him/her. It’s for determining when a normal trait becomes pathologic that we need experts.)

Also, the word you were looking for is “psychiatric”, not “psychoanalytic”. Psychoanalysis is when you lie on a sofa and talk to someone who smokes a cigar. Or something like that, not sure. My sources are perhaps outdated. :slight_smile:

19

Think of personality traits as colors in a painting. Too much red and it’s no longer beautiful. Fashions change, and certain personality traits are more acceptable in some cultures than in others, to the point that something that would be considered normal in one culture would be abnormal in another. These are useful as descriptive terms: we can accept that Ajax has narcissistic traits (everyone has) without diagnosing him, and it would be even more difficult to say whether he would have been considered abnormal by the criteria of his own society.

20

RE: “psychiatric” analysis

I would take a look at Ajax from a neo-pagan framework, something like deamon-ology (think angelology). Play off the difference between deamon-ology and demonology. The irrationalism, extreme violence, movement toward self destruction, preoccupation with death, it all fits. Just touching the tip iceberg here.