350
Oh dear sailors, you who alone, alone of my friends, still remain
me, raised
Chorus
firm in your loyalty, see what a wave now encloses and encircles
by a storm of blood.
Alas, your testimony seems to be all too accurate.
comment by Pickering:
Easterling elucidates the repetition:-
we may be tempted to think that Sophocles was just being careless in repeating
ὀρθός (the passage is indeed cited by Schmid-Stahlin as an instance of
insignificant repetition): one might translate ὀρθῷ νόμῳ as ‘the sound rule of
loyalty’ and ὀρθὰ μαρτυρεῖν as ‘give a true report’; what significant link is there
between these two usages? But the whole context concerns the state of Ajax’s
sanity, and this repetition, involving a shift in the meaning of the repeated word,
ironically draws attention to the gulf between Ajax’s VIew of the SItuation and that
of the ‘normal’ Chorus. That something akin to word-play is at work here is
strongly suggested by ἄγαν which throws all the emphasis onto ὀρθὰ.
It is funny that this isn’t the repetition that caught my eye on first glance which was
Ἰὼ φίλοι ναυβάται, μόνοι ἐμῶν φίλων,
μόνοι <ἔ>τ’ ἐμμένοντες ὀρθῷ νόμῳ,
It might be noted that it’s in initial position that the (most) important repeated words tend to be placed. Neither εφυ nor κυρει are words that lend themselves to such repetition. I suggested that εφυ in 593 is in fact the most appropriate word to use; and likewise for κυρω in 594. In fact this indignant rebuttal speech by Creon, 583-602 (a cui bono rhetorical argument), quite nicely illustrates the difference between them, it seems to me: apart from εφυ in 593 we have εφυν not only in 587 but also (now I glance ahead) in 600, αλλ’ ουτ’ εραστης τησδε της γνωμης εφυν—all three sentences making essentially the same point.
The trio of νῦν’s here pick up the νυν μεν of 590 (νυν μεν γαρ εκ σου παντ’ ανευ φοβου φερω): As things are now (with O. as tyrant and himself not) he has everything he could possibly want, and therefore has no reason to want to change his current situation. Understandable that it’s repeated, especially since he really has nothing else to say.
Yes in the Ajax passage the repetition of μονοι is quite closely comparable to the νυν’s in the OT passage, even though we’re here in a much higher register. Far less to the point is the occurrence of ορθα μαρτυρειν in 354 (chorus in iambics, spoken) following ορθῳ νομῳ in 350 (Ajax in dochmiacs, sung) at an interval of a few lines. Whether that can properly be called “repetition” might be queried.