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7. Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2019

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Extract

At the end of the parodos of Ajax, the chorus urge their lord to leave his hut and appear: in vain, since when the door opens not Ajax but Tecmessa comes on stage. This failure reflects no lack of intensity in their appeal; one phrase in particular showcases the density of Sophoclean language. μακραίωνι…τᾷδ᾿ ἀγωνίῳ σχολᾷ literally means ‘in this long leisure related to conflict/struggle (agônios)’, and that expression takes the phrase in several directions. An obvious initial sense is ‘rest from battle’: Ajax the warrior is not fulfilling his duty to fight. Yet the phrase evokes not just his withdrawal, but its cause: Ajax's ‘rest from battle’ results from his furious reaction to the Judgment of the Arms, in which Odysseus, not he, received the dead Achilles’ armour. That Judgment was itself a conflict, later explicitly designated as an ἀγών (936, 1240): so here ‘idleness provoked by the Judgment of the Arms’ is a natural additional translation. A third sense arises from a third conflict of Ajax's: with the Greeks, his erstwhile comrades, who acquiesced in what Ajax regards as a crooked decision. His failure to fight the Trojans is a form of conflict against his fellow-soldiers, which suggests the meaning ‘contentious inactivity’, with a powerful paradox: this is σχολή, ‘leisure’, with a purpose. Fourthly, the conflict or struggle is one that Ajax is having with himself: ‘however his leisure was employed, it was becoming full of danger to him’.

Type
II Interpretation
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2019 

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References

1 Davidson 1976: 131; cf. Campbell 1881: ad loc. ‘the inactivity of Ajax was his manner of contending with the chiefs’.

2 Campbell 1881: ad loc.

3 Long 1968: 122.

4 Buxton 1984/1995: 9, on OT 424–5.

5 [Longinus], On the Sublime 23.3: χυθεὶς εἰς τὰ πληθυντικὰ ὁ ἀριθμὸς συνεπλήθυσε καὶ τὰς ἀτυχίας (translated by Fyfe and Russell 1995: 243, 245); Finglass 2018e on OT 489–496/7.

6 Long 1968; Moorhouse 1982; Budelmann 2000; De Jong and Rijksbaron 2006; Battezzato 2012; Goldhill 2012; McClure 2012; Rutherford 2012; also Easterling 1999.

7 Goldhill and Hall 2009b: 19.

8 Lloyd-Jones 1983: 171.

9 Goldhill and Hall 2009b: 19.

10 Campbell 1879: 1–107 (first published 1871). For Campbell's edition compared to that of his younger contemporary, Jebb, see Finglass 2014b ≈ 2016a.

11 Campbell 1879: 4.

12 Kennedy 1874.

13 Campbell 1879: xiv.

14 Campbell 1907.

15 Thirlwall 1833. Hug 1872 attempts to list every instance of irony in Oedipus the King, a noble if doomed enterprise. For more recent discussions see Goldhill 2009b; Liapis 2012: 91–2; Lloyd 2012.

16 Finglass in press 2.

17 Buxton 1984/1995: 17; see further Williams 1993: 147–9.

18 Σ p. 199.12–13 Papageorgius: κἀνθαῦθα ἔθηκεν τὸ ἀμϕίβολον ὃ τέρπει τὸν ἀκροατήν. As always with scholia, the commentator's remark may have been fuller in its original context.

19 Syrianus on Hermogenes, i.37.9–10 Rabe.

20 Goldhill and Hall 2009b: 19.

21 Buxton 1984/1995: 9.

22 Denniston 1954: 142.

23 Finglass 2009c.

24 Austin 2006: 105.