With the suicide of Ajax something has reached completion, not only an action but the revelation of a mind which accounts for that action. The play begins again, with a new Parodos. The Chorus re-enters in two groups, searching; and the scene has justly been compared with the searchings of Odysseus at the beginning of the play. What was Odysseus looking for, and what did he find? He was looking, as ever – so Athena says – for some way to get at his enemies: what he found was an object-lesson in the frailty of human fortunes, he found Ajax in an aspect with which he had not reckoned. With the suicide this lesson is complete. The Chorus and Tecmessa lament. Something is over, but something is about to begin. Enter Teucer: a new character, a new tracker (997), brought by a new phatis (978), a new baxis (998); and his entry leads into a new issue. Ajax must be buried; and upon the burial of Ajax the whole of the remainder of the play turns.

It is an old problem. Does, or does not, interest go out of the play with the death of Ajax? Not, perhaps, if we use our eyes and see the corpse, with a child and a woman in attendance; not, perhaps, if we use our imaginations to enter into a Greek preoccupation (which we are, oddly, supposed not to share) with the disposal of a dead body. Sophocles was fully competent to maintain the interest and wrote scenes which are effective even upon the modern stage.