Ajax 1-200 a new start

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seneca2008
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Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by seneca2008 »

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" :D ) 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.
Last edited by seneca2008 on Thu Jun 16, 2016 9:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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Re: Ajax a new start

Post by Paul Derouda »

Just a couple of quick notes.
seneca2008 wrote: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?)
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".
seneca2008 wrote:I did wonder whether the doric " Ἀθάνα" in 74 was for metrical reasons.
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?

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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by mwh »

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

46. 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.

49. 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.

53. 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.

74. 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.

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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

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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.
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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by Paul Derouda »

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...

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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by Hylander »

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.
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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by seneca2008 »

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.
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

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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.
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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

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Paul Derouda wrote: 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...
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.
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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by Timothée »

Isn't semiotics defined as what Umberto Eco studied? :)

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.»

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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by C. S. Bartholomew »

Timothée wrote:Isn't semiotics defined as what Umberto Eco studied? :)


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. :)


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).
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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

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

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!
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by Hylander »

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.)
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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

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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).
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

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seneca2008 wrote: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!
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"? :) ). 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!

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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

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I meant my expert psychoanalytic diagnosis of "narcissistic personality disorder" for Ajax as an anachronistic joke. But still . . . Ajax definitely needed anger management counseling.
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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

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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.
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

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Hylander wrote:I meant my expert psychoanalytic diagnosis of "narcissistic personality disorder" for Ajax as an anachronistic joke. But still . . . Ajax definitely needed anger management counseling.
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. :)

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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by Paul Derouda »

seneca2008 wrote: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.
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.

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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by C. S. Bartholomew »

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.
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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by mwh »

I’m not going to weigh in properly on all this (I’ve only just seen this fast flurry of posts), but I’lI just say that I myself have no interest in psychoanalyzing Sophocles’ Ajax, any more than in psychoanalyzing Euripides’ Pentheus, as George Devereux professionally did some ?forty years ago. (E's Bacchae next for us, perhaps?) You might as well analyze Winnie the Pooh—I trust everyone knows Frederick Crews’ The Pooh Perplex and Postmodern Pooh, by the way. The characters are creations of the dramatist—later 5th-century Athenian creations, at that.

It’s a tribute to Sophocles that it’s possible to think of Ajax as “real” (and how about Tecmessa, and the rest?). Credible, or realistic, perhaps, but even that goes further than I'd be willing to go for the ancient Greek world, however much the character profile may now seem recognizable to us. And I think Ajax’ commitment to the “shame culture,” which surely is fully in line with "heroic values," is crucial to understanding the play. That doesn’t make it irrelevant to us today, btw, just the opposite in fact. A book I read with great admiration is Bernard Williams’ Shame and Necessity, in which he mounts a challenge to facile condemnation of Ajax from our position of supposed moral superiority.

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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by Paul Derouda »

Implicit in the term psychoanalysis is a conviction that a person's personality is defined by often forgotten events in one's early childhood, that there is an "subconscious" part of the mind, which is in conflict with the "conscious" part", that these conflicts can lead to all sorts of mental and emotional disturbances, and that by psychoanalysing the "subconscious" it's possible to achieve therapeutic results. Naturally, there are dozens of different schools and subvarietes of psychoanalysis, none of which I'm familiar with. I'm not interested in psychoanalysis, especially not in the context of the Ajax, and I'm not sure I even believe in it. My own conviction is that personality traits are largely (though by no means exclusively) defined by genetics.

What I really wanted to say is that I can't bring myself to believe that Ajax' acts are to be understood principally in the context of his "commitment to the shame culture". I do believe in such a thing as a shame culture, and I think the concept is relevant if not crucial in understanding the play. But Ajax' (like the other characters') personality traits and behavioral patterns are universal. We read about similar violent acts all the time in the papers. "Shame culture" and "guilt culture", in my opinion, are only relative denominations with lots of overlap; if Ajax lives in a society where shame is the primary modality of social control, this necessarily means that compared to another sort of society, certain behavioral patterns are enforced and rewarded, while others are suppressed – but these behavioral patterns, or the impulses behind them, are universal, and an individual can overcome them only to a certain degree. What I do agree is that it's probably facile to condemn Ajax "from our position of supposed moral superiority"; I think it's likely that a "shame society" had quite a bit more sympathy (or at least understanding) for someone like him. So if I believe that the Ajax can help us to understand the dynamics of this "shame society", I personally find it facile to say that we from our remote modern perspective can glean nothing of the inner workings his mind, that the ancient world is simply too far from us to even begin to imagine.

Let me add that in the context of this play, I find psychiatric terms like "narcissistic" useful as descriptive words. Any psychiatric diagnosis on a character in a play written 2500 years ago is bound to be a joke and that's how I at least intended them. A diagnosis is a useful tool for doctors when they prescribe a treatment, or for someone who realizes after a divorce s/he has lost 15 years of his/her life, but is not ready to take his/her own part of the blame ("I was tricked into marriage by a psychopath!").

Next I think I'm going to read E's Hippolytos, simply because everyone is praising Barrett's commentary on it.

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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by mwh »

I definitely agree on the overlap between shame and guilt cultures. Surely no real society is exclusively one or the other. But Ajax seems to think otherwise with regard to his society.
His "behavior patterns" may be universal but in Attic tragedy, as in Attic real life, you don’t find too many people killing themselves on account of how they think others will judge what they've done. Pre-21st-century Japan might come close to comparability I suppose. And nowadays teen peer shaming and suchlike human nastiness drives some to suicide; as might guilt, but not so often. Suicide bombers are hardly comparable: they've been induced to set a lower value on their lives (as well as the lives of others) than on a greater ideological cause. That’s not why Ajax kills himself. Suicide bombers are honored within their society. Ajax is not.

He’s a very Iliadic character, it seems to me. His attack on the Greek leaders, humiliatingly thwarted by a vindictive Athena, was motivated by his anger at their having awarded the arms of Achilles to Odysseus (a loss of honor, like Achilles’ loss of honor in the Iliad), and his suicide was motivated by the resultant shame of having been duped into killing livestock instead. 367 οιμοι γελωτος· οιον υβρισθην αρα is telling. As is 401ff. His summation focusses on the loss of honor (426 τανυν δ’ ατιμος ωδε προκειμαι), which in his case (unlike in Achilles’ case) is irreparable. Everyone’s laughing at him, and it’s all Athena’s fault (as indeed it is). And there’s not a damn thing he can do about it. Again he sums up: 479f. αλλ’ η καλως ζην η καλως τεθνηκεναι | τον ευγενη χρη. The “heroic code” in a nutshell. Living well entails harming your enemies and being honored for it, both of which he’s been so unfairly prevented from doing. So what alternative is left to him?

All this is longwinded way of reasserting that his acts reflect his commitment to the shame culture—he feels no guilt—and that recognizing that is crucial to understanding of the play. I really didn't expect this to be contested. Perhaps commitment isn’t the best word. Adherence? Enslavement? Devotion? Whatever, he can’t escape it, he acts in accordance with it. It’s what Achilles would have done in his situation—probably. It’s not what Odysseus would have done.

The story was fixed long before Sophocles, but is custom-made for tragedy. Sophocles takes the already powerful script and makes it into a gripping play—the deception speech (who could have seen that coming?), the on-stage suicide instead of a messenger speech (ditto)—but a play whose originality perhaps lies more in what happens after the suicide than in what leads up to it.

Hippolytus, another psychopath. They do seem rather thick on the ground in Greek tragedy, a genre which thrives on exploring extremes and god-directed calamities.

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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

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I think that the shame culture/guilt culture distinction is valid, but 5th century Athens was a guilt culture. At least as much as Victorian England. Maybe I haven't read the right Attic literature yet, but Xenophon and Plato and Euripides all seem to have a very Western sense of internal motivation.

In a shame culture, you don't commit suicide because you feel sorry. You commit suicide because everyone expects you to. The 47 Ronin are a completely different phenomenon from Ajax.

The gulf that we see between ourselves and the Greeks as far as suicide goes is not the shame/guilt divide. It's the pre-Christian, pagan conception of suicide as an honorable way out in certain situations. Perhaps not just pre-Christian -- look at Admiral Boorda in 1996.
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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

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I don't think Ajax's inability to endure shame explains everything about Ajax. While his inability to endure shame leads directly to his suicide, other aspects of his personality have landed him where he is. Selfishness, lack of a sense of responsibility to others, arrogance and impiety--qualities that not all heroic figures display (think of Sarpedon)--play a role in his character. His actions have let down not just the Greeks as a whole, but those closest to him: his wife, son and the sailors accompanying him. We learn from the messenger speech that Ajax has boasted that he is such a great warrior that he doesn't need help from the gods and especially not from Athena. He calls himself the greatest of the Greeks, a title that belonged to Achilles.

At the same time, of course, he is courageous and great-spirited and, in his own way, magnificent, as his speeches demonstrate. Like Achilles, he speaks a language all his own.
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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by mwh »

Hylander, I'm not sure if you're disagreeing with me. You’ve been hanging a lot on that messenger speech so very belatedly (and at third hand) divulging the cause of Athena’s cruelty towards him and pietistically justifying his downfall. Certainly these other aspects of the Iliadic Ajax come to the fore there (somewhat distorted) and cast new light on what he did and suffered before his death. But we don't get the information until that's as good as over. I take a more diachronic and dynamic approach to the play.

And I think we’re altogether too obsessed with judging him. You judge him, and you judge him harshly. You accuse him of selfishness and lack of sense of responsibility: that could be contested. Of arrogance and impiety: certainly, but without it there'd be no tragedy. You say he let down the Greeks as a whole: he would say they let him down. His wife: what wife? (And Tecmessa’s own assessment? ουκ αν ταδ’ εστη τῃδε μη θεων μετα.) His son: he gave him a role model to live up to. And so on. But I’m really not interested in justifying him any more than I am in condemning him. He is what he is, he’s Ajax, the least pliant of the Greek heroes and the most worthy to succeed to the arms of Achilles, and the victim of the shame culture he so magnificently represents. The way we view him and his tragedy shifts as the play proceeds. You won't be alone in your judgment of him, but I have to say it doesn’t cut much ice with me.

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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by Hylander »

I don't think we're meant to completely withhold judgment on Ajax and to fail to see his flaws as well as his greatness and his suffering. (I recognize that attributing intentionality to the text violates every canon of literary theory.) After all, he has just tried to kill large numbers of Greeks, though his efforts were thwarted, mostly, by Athena. And we know this from the start of the play. The messenger's speech shows us that the roots of Ajax's problems run deeper than the award of arms. I don't think his arrogance and impiety are meant to be seen in a neutral light.

Also I don't think we should dismiss Tecmessa as less than a wife, without any claim on Ajax's loyalty. She's after all the mother of the son Ajax regards as his heir. If Tecmessa is less than a wife, Eurysaces is a bastard like Teucer, but that's one of the most vile insults in the play. I definitely do think we're meant to judge the Atreidai--that is, I think they're portrayed in this play in a very negative light (though we have to remember that Ajax just tried to kill them)--but if we judge them we also have to hold other characters' conduct, including that of Ajax, up to judgmental scrutiny. And Ajax never utters a word that suggests he feels responsible for what he's done.

"Shame culture" and "guilt culture" are 20th century concepts unknown to Sophocles. They represent polar opposites that don't do justice to the moral complexities of the society depicted in Ajax. This play is much more than Ajax's suffering, just as Philoctetes is much more than Philoctetes' sufferings.

I've ordered Bernard William's book and will try to understand.
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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

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True, all true. The play invites judgment of Ajax at every turn, as it does of all the other characters but preeminently of him. But it’s a drama, not a character study. And I didn’t like to see the thread degenerating into an excoriation of Ajax from our own culturally conditioned point of view, or reducing him to a mixture of “good” and “bad” qualities. Ajax’s “fault” is finding his loss of honor intolerable, just as Achilles and all Homeric heroes did (with the signal exception of shameless Paris, who bucks the system); he acts out of ethical necessity. That’s why I brought in shame culture (aka honor-shame culture). Their culture was not ours.

Sophocles takes over the Ajax established in the Iliad, “flaws” and all. (If I had one wish, it would be to abolish "flaw" from the vocabulary applied to tragedy.) Longinus (belle-lettriste par excellence, and a literary critic worthy of the name), writing on the “sublime” (περι υψους, “height”), pairs Ajax’ cry to Zeus “Kill us in the light” (εν δε φαει και ολεσσον, Il.17.647) with Genesis’ “Let there be light …” as examples of greatness, μεγεθος, the key idea for him. “Sublimity is the echo of greatmindedness” (υψος μεγαλοφροσυνης απηχημα, 9.1), and Ajax is the exemplar of a great-minded man (cf. Homer’s Aιαντα μεγαλητορα, 17.626). This is the Ajax that Sophocles presents, the Ajax of the Iliad. But μεγαλοφροσυνη is not a character trait tolerated by the gods. μεγα φρονεῖν in tragedy (as in Herodotus) equates to “thinking more than human.” It is to invite disaster.

Sophocles tweaks the Iliad's Ajax a tad by belatedly imputing to him a specific prior “impiety” with regard to Athena, exemplifying his μεγαλοφροσυνη. This goes beyond Homer, and conforms Ajax to a standard tragic model. (I expect it was in the tradition before Sophocles, though, since impiety towards her is the obvious motivation for her maddening of him, cf. e.g. Pentheus in the Bacchae. But the play give no hint of it beforehand.) His destruction follows as night follows day.
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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

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And I didn’t like to see the thread degenerating into an excoriation of Ajax from our own culturally conditioned point of view, or reducing him to a mixture of “good” and “bad” qualities.
I strongly agree with this and it is inherent in what i said in my last few posts, although no-one appeared interested in pursuing what I said. That posters seem unable to be clear about the prejudices and assumptions they bring to this discussion seems to me an overwhelming demonstration of the power of the the ideas in reception theory. Terms like "wife" "shame culture" "guilt" etc have been bandied about as if they are stable concepts. I know posters in the main are not sympathetic to literary theory but at least it attempts to help us be clear about what we are claiming.

I have been busy this weekend and will get back to posting on the text tomorrow.
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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by mwh »

On “wife.” It’s a pretty stable concept in ancient Greece, I’d say. Either you were married or you weren’t. Tecmessa’s status in the Greek tradition is the same as Briseis’s or Cassandra’s: she’s war-booty. But the significant thing is that Sophocles’ play makes no acknowledgment of it.[Edit: Wrong! 485-505!] (Ajax calls her γυνη—e.g. γυναι γυναικι κοσμον ἡ σιγη φερει!—but that’s non-committal as to marital status.) So I think Hylander is right to regard her in the Ajax as at least the equivalent of a wife.

On “shame culture.” A modern term, as Hylander says, but again not too slippery or shifting a concept as anthropologically/sociologically/ethnographically defined. Shame/αισχυνη and honour/τιμη are by no means modern concepts, and are applied with a high degree of consistency in Greek tragedy and throughout contemporary society.

“What is at issue is a set of heroic values.” This is a claim I have some sympathy with, as I think I’ve indicated, and other posters have engaged with it, however inadequately as you and I might think. Of course it needs clarification (which I’ve tried in part to provide), and you’d be the first to acknowledge that it needs unpacking of its unspoken assumption that anything at all is “at issue,” let alone that. (If you insist on everyone making their assumptions explicit we’ll never get anywhere. For my part I’m content to let many of my assumptions be tacit, though I’m willing for any of them to be challenged.) And despite what I’ve said I wouldn’t altogether agree that “it goes down the wrong track to think of Ajax as a character with any connexion to real life (whatever that might mean).” If the character had no connexion to real life the play would hardly be worth reading.

If I have enough willpower I’ll be intervening less from now on.
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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

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On “wife.” It’s a pretty stable concept in ancient Greece, I’d say. Either you were married or you weren’t.
It seems to me that you have simply moved "wife" to "being married" which doesn't take us any further in knowing what that means! The slipperiness I was concerned with is the changing meaning of wife between fifth century Greece and now. It was prompted by Hylander saying "Also I don't think we should dismiss Tecmessa as less than a wife, without any claim on Ajax's loyalty." I agree with you that she is nothing more than a possession to Ajax ("war-booty"). I dont quite see where the idea of loyalty comes from? It seems that Ajax, Achilles and all the other Homeric heroes live their lives on their own terms without any regard for anyone else's feelings much less less their wives. And why should they not? Indeed how could they do anything else? Wives in ancient Greek literature come in many flavours from Clytemnestra to Penelope, Hecuba Medea, its not easy to see these characters as representing a stable category.
If you insist on everyone making their assumptions explicit we’ll never get anywhere.
I dont mean to be taken literally but I wish posters would at least acknowledge that they are making assumptions. From many of the discussions I have seen here this seems to be point worth making. And what is "getting somewhere"? Perhaps there is no destination but just the journey?
If the character had no connexion to real life the play would hardly be worth reading.
I didnt express myself well. I was trying to say that Ajax is a mixture of many different ideas and that trying to map him, as if he were a 'real" person, onto serial killers or modern individuals who have a "narcissistic personality disorder" is going down the wrong track. Ajax might not be a real person but the dilemma he faces has meaning for us which is why we read the play.

Paul on psychoanalysis and the ancient world I would recommend "Freud's Rome" by Ellen Oliensis. Another in the excellent "Roman Literature and its contexts" series.

I am sorry mwh you will engage less on this. Now there will be no-one who is sympathetic to my approach. Having said that I dont want anyone to get the idea that I am being dismissive of their views. I have learned a lot from reading the posts.
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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by Paul Derouda »

Seneca: I have some difficulty understanding what you're saying. Is it possible, ever, "to be clear about the prejudices and assumptions" of our own time? Is any discussion bound to be a nonstarter? As far as "shame/guilt culture" is concerned, I said that '"Shame culture" and "guilt culture", in my opinion, are only relative denominations with lots of overlap'; I consider these useful as descriptive terms, that's all; they're not going to tell us the whole truth about a society, they just help us to look at one aspect, one tiny dimension of it. I also never said that they are "stable concepts", quite the opposite. And I don't think Hylander meant that to say "wife" is a stable concept, his point was simply that Tecmessa has some claim to Ajax' loyalty. And if I got into deep water about psychological stuff, it's because I had the feeling (and still have) that others think that I'm interested about a Freudian mumbo jumbo reading of Sophocles. Even if, say, "narcissistic" is a modern concept, the personality trait the word describes is not a modern phenomenon - "gravity", "ethanol" and "anceps" are also modern concepts, but would you argue that they have no relevance for ancient Greece? Did things fall to the ground in Sophocles' time, or am I smuggling in my own assumptions?

To me it seems that I can agree with most of what has been said in this thread; to me, mwh's and Hylander's apparent differences seem to be only ones of emphasis, and I mostly agree with both of them. "Heroic values" and "shame culture" are also just two different way of describing the same thing. mwh said that "[what Ajax did is] not what Odysseus would have done", which shows that adherence to "heroic values" and "shame culture" wasn't ubiquitous and depended on one's personality. I didn't bring up suicide bombers, because I don't think they are quite analogical to what Ajax did; school shootings are closer, for example. They are not very common, because we live (mostly) in a "guilt society", but they happen. I didn't expect that this would be so strongly contested, but if all modern analogies are to be rejected, so be it.

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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by seneca2008 »

Just a quick reply Paul to make it clear that I dont aim to reject "modern analogies". They are fruitful and suggestive. Thats what reception theory is in part about.

I have said before that I believe everything in the world is culturally determined. Things fell to the ground in ancient greece but Aristotle figured the phenomena differently to Galileo and in turn differently to Einstein and now Hawking. Science is not something that stands outside culture it is part of it. As Wittgenstein said the world is the totality of facts not of things.
Is it possible, ever, "to be clear about the prejudices and assumptions" of our own time?
I dont think we can escape them. We cannot stand outside of our culture. We just need to be aware of this.
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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

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To return to the question of the stability of the term "wife" I should have mentioned that as gender is a mobile, culturally determined, idea "wife" too must be an unstable concept. Ajax's idea of his masculinity is also part of the play and more generally if "masculinity" were a fixed idea about which there was no doubt why is it so contested in so many texts?

I will get back to the text this afternoon.
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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

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An individual's masculinity must have been contested an infinite number of times since the beginning of humanity. The idea of masculinity was probably contested for the first time around 1960. In my opinion it's the assumption that "gender is a mobile, culturally determined idea" that is, if anything, a prejudice of our own time. Sorry to be provocative about that.

But as Bill Clinton once famously said, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."

On the other hand, couldn't we just decide that it's ok to make some assumptions and assume that others are saying what they seem to be saying? I for one am writing in a language that is not my own, and it already takes me at least two or three times longer than you to write a more-or-less coherent sentence. I may not always find the mot juste and have to content myself with second best; and if I have to take into account every possible way that I might be misunderstood, I'll never be able to post anything.

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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

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Paul thanks for your post. I do underestimate how difficult it is to post in a second language and it is a testimony to your facility that I forget.

I wouldn't want to prevent anyone posting anything or having to censor what they say. I think what is at issue is not so much finding the right words as both of us having a different conceptual framework. Its hard enough trying to express this in my first language I dont think I could begin to engage in a second language.

How to reply to what you say about gender? I certainly dont privilege any position and although some interpretations interest me more than others I am not claiming that my approach is "more correct" or "authentic". Also I don't believe that all interpretations are equally valid. Negotiating all this is a minefield.

I dont, however, agree that gender or discourse about gender is entirely a modern invention. Perhaps if you were to think about Clytemnestra and her mastery of language and appropriation of a masculine persona in the Agamemnon you might agree that is at least possible to read the text as having something to do with sexual politics. Clytemnestra contests male dominance ( see for example line 11 "γυναικὸς ἀνδρόβουλον ἐλπίζον κέαρ" or 52 "γύναι, κατ᾽ ἄνδρα σώφρον᾽ εὐφρόνως λέγεις". Aegisthus, by contrast is characterised as effeminate (1625- γύναι, σὺ τοὺς ἥκοντας ἐκ μάχης μένων /οἰκουρὸς εὐνὴν ἀνδρὸς αἰσχύνων ἅμα /ἀνδρὶ στρατηγῷ τόνδ᾽ ἐβούλευσας μόρον;). These examples I think show some anxiety about gender. There are of course many others. Also one needs to remember that all the female roles in Greek tragedy were played by men which adds to the instability of roles.

This has all got rather far from Ajax and I will try to get back to the text. I do hope we can continue what I see as our friendly exchanges. If my tone is too strident put it down to enthusiam.
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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by C. S. Bartholomew »

seneca2008 wrote:
I dont, however, agree that gender or discourse about gender is entirely a modern invention. Perhaps if you were to think about Clytemnestra and her mastery of language and appropriation of a masculine persona in the Agamemnon you might agree that is at least possible to read the text as having something to do with sexual politics. Clytemnestra contests male dominance ( see for example line 11 "γυναικὸς ἀνδρόβουλον ἐλπίζον κέαρ" or 52 "γύναι, κατ᾽ ἄνδρα σώφρον᾽ εὐφρόνως λέγεις". Aegisthus, by contrast is characterised as effeminate (1625- γύναι, σὺ τοὺς ἥκοντας ἐκ μάχης μένων /οἰκουρὸς εὐνὴν ἀνδρὸς αἰσχύνων ἅμα /ἀνδρὶ στρατηγῷ τόνδ᾽ ἐβούλευσας μόρον;). These examples I think show some anxiety about gender. There are of course many others. Also one needs to remember that all the female roles in Greek tragedy were played by men which adds to the instability of roles.
While not exactly about Greek lexical semantics and syntax, this has been an amusing thread. My reading of Soph. Electra convinced me that the gender wars are not a totally modern invention. Electra's hatred of her mother and her attitude toward cultural constraints on her behavior have a familiar ring to them. Clytemnestra while not exactly a feminist, she isn't Penelope.

RE: Hermeneutics

Why not read Ajax on it's own terms? The dialogue between Athena and Odysseus at opening gives a hermeneutical framework for understanding the play. Driven by a sense of wounded honor, Ajax has been blinded by Athena. This finds parallels in the Hebrew Prophets (Isaiah 6) which is quoted in the Gospels[1]. Ajax is "demonized" or under the control of a deity, in this case Athena. To appreciate the text we need to enter into the world of the text. That world included deities at multiple levels. These deities were not friendlies, if your viewing them from a human perspective. They had their own agenda and humans were expendable.


[1]Matt 13:13 διὰ τοῦτο ἐν παραβολαῖς αὐτοῖς λαλῶ, ὅτι βλέποντες οὐ βλέπουσιν καὶ ἀκούοντες οὐκ ἀκούουσιν οὐδὲ συνίουσιν, 14 καὶ ἀναπληροῦται αὐτοῖς ἡ προφητεία Ἠσαΐου ἡ λέγουσα· ἀκοῇ ἀκούσετε καὶ οὐ μὴ συνῆτε, καὶ βλέποντες βλέψετε καὶ οὐ μὴ ἴδητε. 15 ἐπαχύνθη γὰρ ἡ καρδία τοῦ λαοῦ τούτου, καὶ τοῖς ὠσὶν βαρέως ἤκουσαν καὶ τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς αὐτῶν ἐκάμμυσαν, μήποτε ἴδωσιν τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς καὶ τοῖς ὠσὶν ἀκούσωσιν καὶ τῇ καρδίᾳ συνῶσιν καὶ ἐπιστρέψωσιν καὶ ἰάσομαι αὐτούς.
C. Stirling Bartholomew

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Paul Derouda
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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by Paul Derouda »

I don't really want get into a convoluted debate about discourse on gender; the main point of my provocative remark was to bring us back to earth... :) Gender isn't a modern invention, quite the opposite; but I'd hazard that compared to how a modern academic Westerner views gender, a 19th century European, a 400 BC Athenian and a pre-Columbian Native American would have had a lot in common. All three of them would have listened in equal incomprehension if someone talked to them about "feminities" and "masculinities" in the plural – I don't contest that debate or its relevance in itself, but I'd very very careful about finding anything like that in a Greek tragedy. And far as Agamemnon is concerned, it's now several years since I read it, but without reading it again I don't think that disproves my point about the idea of masculinity/feminity vs. an individual's masculinity/feminity being contested, and I don't think that Clytemnestra contests male dominance – she seems more like a woman pharaoh who dons a false beard to me.
C. S. Bartholomew wrote:Why not read Ajax on it's own terms?
But we don't seem to agree what those "terms" are... ;) I agree the religious aspect shouldn't be forgotten either.

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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by seneca2008 »

and I don't think that Clytemnestra contests male dominance – she seems more like a woman pharaoh who dons a false beard to me.
I think the analogy with Hatshepsut is spot on. Thats what we mean by "contesting male dominance".

If you dont want to engage in a debate on gender thats fine. But its something that really interests me. There is an enormous secondary literature on gender issues in Greek tragedy. I would respectfully suggest that you have a look before dismissing the ideas so peremptorily.

As to Stirling's suggestion I too have no idea what "its own terms" are either. I suspect he is having fun with us. :D
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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Re: Ajax 1-200 a new start

Post by seneca2008 »

Back to the text.

Just a few things:

I was a bit startled by 71-72 οὗτος, σὲ τὸν τὰς αἰχμαλωτίδας χέρας /δεσμοῖς ἀπευθύνοντα προσμολεῖν καλῶ and 89 ὦ οὕτος, Αἴας, δεύτερόν σε προσκαλῶ. I have been reading Aristophanes and the register seems to be a bit harsh. Finglass discuss whether it might be "friendly urgency" but concludes that it is peremptory.

I have already mentioned 100 θανόντες ἤδη τἄμ᾽ ἀφαιρείσθων ὅπλα. Ajax chillingly alludes to the root cause of his distress.

Αἴας ἦ τοὐπίτριπτον κίναδος ἐξήρου μ᾽ ὅπου; 103-4
Ἀθήνα ἔγωγ᾽: Ὀδυσσέα τὸν σὸν ἐνστάτην λέγω.

Finglass quotes M. Davies (unpublished commentary) " it is psychological appropriate that in none of Ajax's references to his enemy does he directly name Odysseus" This reminded me the first few books of the Odyssey where Odysseus' name is either postponed or mentioned in a formula "father far away" or some such. There perhaps it is just too painful to name him. I wonder whether there is a resonance here? (Well there was for me at any rate).

Αἴας μάστιγι πρῶτον νῶτα φοινιχθεὶς θάνῃ. 110

Idiot question is θάνῃ subjunctive if so why? The sense seems clear but I am not sure how it works.

Ἀθήνα σὺ δ᾽ οὖν, ἐπειδὴ τέρψις ἥδε σοι τὸ δρᾶν,
χρῶ χειρί, φείδου μηδὲν ὧνπερ ἐννοεῖς. 115

I have a difficulty with "χρῶ χειρί". Finglass has "use your hand" and LSJ has this use with dat. So I am happy with that. But Jebb has use all violence and Campbell refers me to Herodotus 9.72 " ἀλλ᾽ ὅτι οὐκ ἐχρήσατο τῇ χειρὶ καὶ ὅτι οὐδέν ἐστί οἱ ἀποδεδεγμένον ἔργον ἑωυτοῦ ἄξιον προθυμευμένου ἀποδέξασθαι." Which seems to be more about striking or attacking. H L-J has "the action is in your power! Do not hold your hand...." This seems to extend the idea of χειρί to the final clause?
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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