Ajax 1-200

Greek Learning Greek
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I think that the Let’s Read: AJAX thread has become like an “overgrown path” and so I propose starting again. I dont want to repeat many of the good things which have already been said there but a little overlap will be inevitable. I think texts should be (re)read slowly and carefully so I wont be rushing through this text.

Anyone is welcome to post anything they like. I am not so interested in literary translation and will concentrate on grammatical stumbling blocks and some interpretative ideas.

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ἀεὶ μέν, ὦ παῖ Λαρτίου, δέδορκά σε
πεῖράν τιν᾽ ἐχθρῶν ἁρπάσαι θηρώμενον:
καὶ νῦν ἐπὶ σκηναῖς σε ναυτικαῖς ὁρῶ
Αἴαντος, ἔνθα τάξιν ἐσχάτην ἔχει,
πάλαι κυνηγετοῦντα καὶ μετρούμενον 5
ἴχνη τὰ κείνου νεοχάραχθ᾽, ὅπως ἴδῃς
εἴτ᾽ ἔνδον εἴτ᾽ οὐκ ἔνδον. εὖ δέ σ᾽ ἐκφέρει
κυνὸς Λακαίνης ὥς τις εὔρινος βάσις.
ἔνδον γὰρ ἁνὴρ ἄρτι τυγχάνει, κάρα
στάζων ἱδρῶτι καὶ χέρας ξιφοκτόνους. 10
καί σ᾽ οὐδὲν εἴσω τῆσδε παπταίνειν πύλης
ἔτ᾽ ἔργον ἐστίν, ἐννέπειν δ᾽ ὅτου χάριν
σπουδὴν ἔθου τήνδ᾽, ὡς παρ᾽ εἰδυίας μάθῃς.

I am heartened that Finglass thinks the function of the opening μέν is unclear. I did stumble a bit on taking “ἁρπάσαι” as depending on “θηρώμενον” but Finglass says taking “ἁρπάσαι” as an “epexegetic infinitive…appears needlessly complicated”. “ἐχθρῶν” “against your enemies “is not much different from “on your enemies” but seems clearer to me.

βάσις as the subject of ἐκφέρει has been dealt with. Finglass takes εὔρινος as a genitive. He argues that while enallage is found in tragedy “we do not expect it everywhere” and that it is not in keeping with Athena’s straightforward style here.

“ κάρα στάζων” was problematic for a moment until I thought of accusative of respect. I also failed to notice the rough breathing on “ἁνὴρ”. I forgot the idiom “ ἔργον ἐστίν” “there is need of” plus infinitive. “σπουδὴν” as “effort” was not the first word I thought of and perhaps we are meant to think of haste as well. I see that LSJ has … ς. ἔχειν, c. inf., to be eager, which at least clarifies the periphrastic construction.

The concentration of references to hunting are worth noting. θηρώμενον, κυνηγετοῦντα, ἴχνη ….νεοχάραχθ᾽ and the dog simile 7-8. As Finglass notes “such terminology remains important through the prologue.”

There is much scene painting here which is effected in the most economical manner. It also goes beyond simple description but gives a clue to a possible meaning of the play. Ajax’s liminal position with regard to the rest of the Greeks is indicated in “ἔνθα τάξιν ἐσχάτην ἔχει”. The fact that he is also on the sea shore (itself a liminal space) is revealed in “ἐπὶ σκηναῖς σε ναυτικαῖς”. The sea shore is also evoked in “ ἴχνη …νεοχάραχθ᾽” presumably newly imprinted tracks in the sand.

The description of Ajax as “ κάρα / στάζων ἱδρῶτι καὶ χέρας ξιφοκτόνους” is extraordinary. Immediately pricking our desire to know more. But ξιφοκτόνους clearly indicates something violent has happened as does the sweating of course.

Finglass has interesting things to say about this speech and Athena’s relationship with Homer’s Odysseus. The ἀεὶ of the first line seems to me particularly resonant and rich.

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?

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Liminal: https://goo.gl/JWdwAK – The 1920-1980 numbers are nearly all false positives.

x _ . _ x _ . εὖ δέ σ᾽ ἐκφέρει
κυνὸς Λακαίνης ὥς τις εὔρινος βάσις.

Taking εὔρινος as nominative, ὥς τις also applies to the hound? “And a track well-bears you like some female-Laconian dog.” As a genitive, it would be hard for me to understand the word order. (My reading ability has gotten much better since the last thread, I hope, so please don’t hold anything I said there against me.)

καί σ᾽ οὐδὲν εἴσω τῆσδε παπταίνειν πύλης ἔτ᾽ ἔργον ἐστίν

In prose would this be: οὐδὲν ἔργον ἔτ’ ἐστι τοῦ σε παπταίνειν εἴσω τῆσδε πύλης ?

x _ . _ x, ἐννέπειν δ᾽ ὅτου χάριν
σπουδὴν ἔθου τήνδ᾽

This was hard for me. I had to look up ἔθου (middle aorist of τιθημι) re-read it a few times until it made sense. ὅτου χάριν (for the sake of what) σπουδὴν ἔθου τήνδ’ (did you make this busy-ness)

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ἀπόλλυται

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Taking εὔρινος as nominative, ὥς τις also applies to the hound? “And a track well-bears you like some female-Laconian dog.” As a genitive, it would be hard for me to understand the word order. (My reading ability has gotten much better since the last thread, I hope, so please don’t hold anything I said there against me.)

Nothing is held against anyone. We are all learning. I hope my mistakes are picked up too!

“Well does your course bring you to your goal, like that of a keen scented Laconian dog” is how Finglass translates it. LSJ have “IV. bring to one’s end, bring on to the trail” for " ἐκφέρω".

If you take εὔρινος as a nominative, applying the adjective to another noun by enallage, with “keen-scented course of the dog” stands for “course of a keen-scented dog”. So εὔρινος would grammatically agree with βάσις but be transferred to κυνὸς by enallage. Finglass doesnt like that. He says that the audience hearing κυνὸς swiftly followed by εὔρινος would probably take them together. Other reasons for not taking εὔρινος as nominative is that it is not attested until Barbarius (EDIT Babrius. thanks Hylander!) (2nd c. or earlier). Its all a matter of judgement.

As to the word order this doesnt seem to me to be anything out of the way in Tragedy where hyperbaton is the norm. I am not sure it really helps to reimagine what the order would be in prose. It is what it is and we have to do our best to understand it. Here κυνὸς Λακαίνης ὥς τις εὔρινος seems like quite a neat syntactic unit.

I have read much more Tragedy and Comedy than prose so what strikes you as odd probably doesnt strike me in the same way.

x _ . _ x, ἐννέπειν δ᾽ ὅτου χάριν
σπουδὴν ἔθου τήνδ᾽

This was hard for me. I had to look up ἔθου (middle aorist of τιθημι) re-read it a few times until it made sense. ὅτου χάριν (for the sake of what) σπουδὴν ἔθου τήνδ’ (did you make this busy-ness)

Yes this is tricky. Finglass simply says “but say why you have made this effort” but as I said in my post I think we are meant to think about zeal, haste and as you say busyness. Having to choose one word is always problematic when the semantic range is so wide.

6

ἀπόλλυται

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ὥς τις εὔρινος βάσις. τις can’t be genitive and therefore has to modify βάσις. κυνὸς Λακαίνης is definitely genitive.

“[Your gait] carries you well like a gait of a well-nosed Laconian bitch” or “a well-nosed gait of a Laconian bitch.”

τις functions here (as it sometimes does in Greek) almost like an indefinite article. βάσις doesn’t need to be repeated.

I’m inclined to keep τις εὔρινος βάσις as a unit. I think it’s more likely that the audience would hear it as a unit, even with a striking enallage, rather than perceive a somewhat radical hyperbaton. EDIT: On second thought, I think Finglass is probably right.

Barbarius – you mean Babrius.

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Ἀεὶ μέν, ὦ παῖ Λαρτίου, δέδορκά σε
πεῖράν τιν’ ἐχθρῶν ἁρπάσαι θηρώμενον·
καὶ νῦν ἐπὶ σκηναῖς σε ναυτικαῖς ὁρῶ
Αἴαντος, ἔνθα τάξιν ἐσχάτην ἔχει,
πάλαι κυνηγετοῦντα καὶ μετρούμενον
ἴχνη τὰ κείνου νεοχάραχθ’, ὅπως ἴδῃς
εἴτ’ ἔνδον εἴτ’ οὐκ ἔνδον.

Cooper[1] observes that μέν … δέδορκά σε corresponding to καὶ νῦν … ὁρῶ is surprising but not impossible. Using his metalanguage, we would expect an adversative corresponding to μέν, whereas KAI, TE, HDE, AUTE, found occasionally corresponding with μέν, are progressives.

Switching gears, the discourse[2] function of Ἀεὶ μέν is plain as day. It sets off the first two lines as background, contextualizing information. καὶ νῦν … ὁρῶ launches from the platform provided by Ἀεὶ μέν … δέδορκά σε.



[1] vol4 69.44.3.k pages 3032-3036

[2] S. H. Levinsohn, Discourse Features 2nd Ed. SIL 2000, p. 170, §10.1 Prospective μέν.

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It’s strange that Finglass finds the opening μέν’s function unclear. I think these “speech opening” μέν’s have discussed here before, but it seem to me that it also anticipates καὶ νῦν, as others have already noted. How much more function do we need?

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ἀπόλλυται

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No, we are to understand it “He has done a terrible deed to us.” ἡμᾶς is called external object, πρᾶγος ἄσκοπον internal object.

http://perseus.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.9:6:98.NewPerseusMonographs

  1. In the case of “τρανές” we have, I assume, an adjective acting on οὐδὲν, not an adverb.

Either is possible, I think: In Greek, you may easily turn neuter adjective into adverbs. I’d perhaps rather take this one as an adverb.

What exactly is the grammatical means by which “ἐθελοντής” functions? Is it as I have supposed, i.e. appositively to the subject—“I, a willing-person”?

Yes.

The grammatical function of the idiom “αὐτοῖς ποιμνίων ἐπιστάταις” I found very difficult to discern. I made a number of theories in my mind before I decided that the “αὐτοῖς” is probably but an adjective modifying “ἐπιστάταις,” and “ἐπιστάταις” an adverb acting on “ἐφθαρμένας”; although how “αὐτοῖς” gives rise to the notion of “along with” I do not quite understand.

The notion of “along with” comes from the dative case. αὐτοῖς gives an idea like “with the overseers themselves”, “not only the animals, but even the overseers” Compare Odyssey 8.186 ἦ ῥα καὶ αὐτῷ φάρει ἀναΐξας λάβε δίσκον “[Odysseus] spoke, and jumping up with cloak and all (“without removing his cloak”, “even with his cloak on”) took a discus”. The overseers of the animals are more important than the animals, that’s why they are αὐτοί. (The cloak isn’t more important than Odysseus, though… :slight_smile: )

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Thanks to everyone that replied to my post.

Hylander thanks for correcting by barbaric “Babrius.”. I have edited the post. I didnt mean to imply that τις was a genitive merely that it fitted inside a string of genitives quite neatly.

Thanks for all the suggestions on μέν opening a speech. All I meant by it was that if a brilliant scholar like Finglass thinks its unclear then I wasnt going to expend too much energy trying to think of something. For anyone with more energy than me he refers to Fraenkel on Aesch. Ag. 1 and Denniston 382-3.

Jeidsath I dont understand what you mean by your link to a word frequency graph for liminal. I hope your other questions were all answered by Hylander if not by me.

MarkAnthony. I hope we can have a proper balance between translation, grammatical commentary and interpretation in this thread. As some of these opening lines had already been covered in the original thread I hope you will take advantage of some of the solutions already offered there. The value or otherwise of interlinear translations has been extensively discussed on this forum. I dont want to get involved in rehashing old arguments but I would observe that several very experienced and highly competent Greek readers on this forum have said they are not at all helpful. Its up to you what you do with that advice.

Finding the right register for translating Sophocles into English is very hard. I would advise simple direct translation rather than trying a sort of nineteenth century “archaising” style which runs the risk of bathos and appearing comic or just “quaint”. That is certainly the advice given to undergraduates in the UK. Greek tragedy is almost untranslatable which is why I decided to learn Greek in the first place.

I will try to look at your questions tomorrow if any remain unanswered.

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ἀπόλλυται

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Markanthony you are free to post what you like as long as its on topic, as I said at the beginning of the thread. I would urge conscion if this thread is not going to suffer from the defects of the original. I had thought that given these lines had already been worked over we should simply talk about problems we had encountered rather than post all of our own preparatory work. Of course its necessary to attempt a translation, which sticks as closely as possible to the original, of those parts of the text that you are trying to understand. But the interlinear approach which entails writing non-sensical English in a misguided attempt to mirror a Greek construction or word order which has no parallel in English seems to be positively unhelpful.

This post is already too long and I suggest you start a new thread if you want to rehearse all the arguments about translation and interlinears which have been well ventilated before. I should have know better than to say anyhting about it at all.

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I didnt mean to imply that τις was a genitive merely that it fitted inside a string of genitives quite neatly.

I may have been wrong, but I thought Joel might have taken it as genitive, and my response was directed to him. The word order, assuming εὔρινος is genitive, isn’t unusual. A language with inflected nouns and adjectives can do this. The term for this is “hyperbaton.” This happens a lot in spoken Russian, a language with even more complicated noun and adjective inflections than Latin or Greek. And Latin “allows” this too, especially Latin poetry, though of course we shouldn’t think of this as some sort of license, but rather as a normal feature of Greek/Latin/Russian word order.

In prose would this be: οὐδὲν ἔργον ἔτ’ ἐστι τοῦ σε παπταίνειν εἴσω τῆσδε πύλης ?

The idiom ἔργον ἐστι takes a non-articular infinitive complement or a genitive noun complement:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3De)%2Frgon

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What Seneca means, I think, is that while you ask good and relevant questions about the Greek, translating everything tends to make these threads unnecessarily long. It might be more profitable for everyone to concentrate on the bits that we find difficult and translate only those, as otherwise any thread will be unmanageably long in no time. And although everybody on these boards tends to go out of subject from time to time (especially on learning methods!), it is a temptation we should try to resist! :wink:

I’m not quite sure what you mean. The way English works here is not going to help us here – in Greek αὐτοὺς ἐπαίδευσε, accusative αὐτοὺς does not amount to a dative αὐτοῖς, although it might seem odd from an English point of view. You’ll simply have to accept that Greek verbs can take two arguments in the accusative, one called “internal object” and the other “external object”. :slight_smile:

I think it would be nonsensical without αὐτοῖς; but if you were pointing a native ancient Greek with a gun and asking him to translate this, he might reluctant admit that it just might mean “slain by the guardians”.

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ἀπόλλυται

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ᾖς. Owing to the fact that this verb is in the subjunctive mood, are we to assume that there are times when Athena has appeared in the flesh to Odysseus?

Edit see mwh’s post. " ἤν, ἄν (B) [α_], which by crasis with καί become κἄν:—if haply, if, regularly folld. by subj.: for its use and for examples, v. εἰ B. 11, and ἄν (A) B.1.1. LSJ

As you know Athena and Odysseus have a long shared history.

Finglass says that ὅμως inserted into a concessive clause seems to have caused problems to earlier commentators and prior to Elmsley (1814) the comma was placed before ὅμως not after. The current punctuation is in line with normal tragic diction. Both punctuations are found in mss.

εὐμαθές must be a neuter acc in agreement φώνημ᾽ as an object of ἀκούω and σου the genitive of source. I suppose σου could be a possessive?

“χαλκοστόμου κώδωνος ὡς Τυρσηνικῆς” seems to caused problems for a number of people. “Like that of a bronze-mouthed Etruscan trumpet” seems straightforward enough. κώδωνος is a “bell”. Finglass gives many references to Athena’s connection with a trumpet and (interestingly) the six types of trumpet referred to by the scholia on Il.18.219!

An observation: might not πάλαι be a reference back to Athena’s initial words “ὁρῶ πάλαι”?

I think so. Just as in a metaphorical way the circling round (βάσιν κυκλοῦντ᾽ etc) suggests events have continued for some time.

“Αἴαντι τῷ σακεσφόρῳ”. Ajax’s huge tower-shield is worth noting here as a characteristic of Ajax in the Iliad, a symbol of his power. Its interesting to see how this play works as an intertext with Homer and no doubt some at least of the first audiences must have felt these resonances quite powerfully.

νυκτὸς…τῆσδε genitive of time so “during this time”.

τρανές I take as an adverb as this is the normal usage.

ὑπεζύγην is passive from ὑποζεύγνυμι yoke under. So here means submit to (as a volunteer).

“λείας ἁπάσας καὶ κατηναρισμένας
ἐκ χειρὸς αὐτοῖς ποιμνίων ἐπιστάταις”

Is worth pausing on as the “ἐκ χειρὸς” . Fraenkel says “the emphasis is on the strange fact that the herds have been killed by a human hand (not by wild beasts).” This rules out Jebb’s idea of close at hand. Finglass translates λείας ἁπάσας as “the entire spoil”. Of course the animals have been plundered from surrounding villages. Finglass also says that the dead animals are “repeatedly referred to in the play but the murder of their guardians receives only one mention. …But S. avoids giving it prominence, as Ajax’s killing of the animals is a greater mark of humiliation, and a more pathetic contrast with his intended victims (the Greek army). The dead guardians are thus relegated to an associative dative, which often expresses an extra remarkable detail rather than the main burden of the sentence.”

I am not sure I can add much to the explanations of “αὐτοῖς ποιμνίων ἐπιστάταις”. The idea “along with” is expressed by the dative. Its a common Greek idiom.

If you want more on the double accusative Finglass suggests Moorhouse The Syntax of Sophocles 37-8. You can search the text at google books here.

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Some misapprehension about 15 κἂν ἄποπτος ᾖς? κἂν is καὶ ἐάν, “even if,” “even though,” necessarily with subjunctive. The modal particle ἄν would not follow καί.
—Edit. Sorry, you may have all recognized this.

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Paul has segregated posts on the meter, but of course it’s an integral constituent of the play, and if you’re reading metrically (as you absolutely should!—to read verse without the meter is as bad as reading it without the words) you might care to look at that thread. I’ve just written something about the lyrics of 172-200—in a reprehensibly lengthy post.