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Sophocles' Ajax and Euripides' Heracles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Shirley A. Barlow
Shirley A. Barlow*
Affiliation:
University of Kent at Canterbury
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Extract

Enkarterēsō bioton (‘I shall endure life’). So speaks Euripides' Heracles in a moment of crucial decision when he rejects the idea of suicide in spite of the horror he has been through and the subsequent shame he must live with. This moment expresses more than patient resignation; it is a calculated and positive decision to live on, a hard-made decision and perhaps a surprising one. Was Euripides here thinking of that other great hero depicted by Sophocles, Ajax, who had been through a similar experience of madness and had chosen the opposite course in consequence of it, namely to take his own life? Sophocles' Ajax was probably produced in the 440's, Euripides' Heracles about 418. It is scarcely credible that Euripides was not familiar with this great work of Sophocles. There were doubtless other plays on the theme of madness in between but Ajax would surely be particularly memorable as a well-known cult figure in Athens and elsewhere.

The similarities between the two tragedies are considerable. I want first to explore them, then show how the difference in treatment of similar themes, particularly those of aretē, madness and tukhē, make up the unique character of each play. Such a comparison starting from common focal points should serve to set in relief the distinguishing characteristics of each author's treatment.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , 1981 , pp. 112 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1981

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References

NOTES

The translations of the Ajax and the Heracles used in this study are basically those of John Moore (Ajax) and William Arrowsmith (Heracles), both in the University of Chicago Press's The Complete Greek Tragedies, ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore. Where necessary, modifications have been made to achieve closer correspondence to the original text.

1. Her. 1351. Bioton is the conjecture of Wilamowitz. The MSS have thanaton. I am assuming that bioton is correct and that a pedestrian scribe not used to the startling sentiment of the context here substituted without thinking the inappropriate tragic cliché with thanaton, ‘I shall endure death’. That of course is nonsense in this context. If thanaton is right the meaning would have to be ‘I shall prevail against death’ (as Arrowsmith translates — cf. the introduction to his translation, p.58 n.3) or ‘I shall wait for death to come’. The first meaning has some slight parallel at Andromache 262, where the meaning is possibly ‘defy’. But for the latter meaning there appears to be no parallel. On the other hand the sense with bioton is excellent and exactly what is required in the context.

2. On the date of the Ajax see the edition of W. B. Stanford (London, 1963), Appendix G, pp.294ff. and his conclusion on p.296. On the date of the Heracles see Wilamowitz, , Herakles (Berlin, 1899), i.134ffGoogle Scholar. and the note preceding the play in Murray's OCT (Oxford, 1913).

3. On the cults of Ajax and Heracles in Athens and elsewhere, see Farnell, L. R., Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality (Oxford, 1921), 305–10 (Ajax) and 95-145 (HeraclesGoogle Scholar).

4. Literary traditions behind the two heroes are dealt with by Stanford, op. cit. (n.2 above), xii-xxiv, and Wilamowitz, op. cit. (n.2 above), i. 102-8.

5. Aretē: Aj. 618, 1357; Her. 357, 659, 697. Eugeneia, eugenēs, gennaios, esthlos: Aj. 480, 524, 1345, 1355; Her. 50, 292, 357, 696, 1227, 1335. Eukleia, eukleēs: Aj. 465; Her. 290, 1370. ‘Shame’ — aidōs, aidoumai, aiskhunē, aiskhros, aiskhunō: Aj. 174, 473, 1305; Her. 1160, 1199, 1423. Tukhē (‘chance’): Aj. 323, 485, 803, 980, 1028, 1058; Her. 203, 480, 509, 1116, 1357, 1396. Khronos (‘time’): Aj. 600, 646; Her. 506, 777.

6. The reading areta(i) is the conjecture of Nauck adopted by Diggle in the OCT; Tyrwhitt conjectures aretais, which is adopted by Paley. There are clearly three syllables missing and it is hard to see how Heracles may be said to have ‘exceeded his noble birth’ if not in his aretē, referred to elsewhere (though in the plural) at 357. The singular occurs at 342 and 659, though not in direct allusion to Heracles.

7. ‘Gloriously triumphant’ (LSJ); cf. Archilochus 119 where it is also used in an address to Heracles triumphant.

8. This traditional Greek view is presented through the words of Simonides and subsequently attacked by Plato, , Rep. 331e ffGoogle Scholar. Note esp. 334b where the traditional view is summed up as being influential from Homer onwards.

9. Gellie, G. H., Sophocles: A Reading (Melbourne, 1972), 7Google Scholar, makes the point that the intentions of the sane and the mad Ajax are the same.

10. H. H. O. Chalk discusses the role of bia in the Heracles in his article ‘Aretē and Bia in Euripides’ Herakles’, JHS 82 (1962), 7–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. Stanford, op. cit. (n.2 above), xxvii-xxviii, draws attention to the epithets indicating the savage harshness of Ajax.

12. I agree with Stanford's and Gellie's view of the ‘deception speech’ elaborated in Stanford, op. cit. (n.2 above), Appendix D, 281-88, and in Gellie, op. cit. (n.9 above), 15f.: ‘What Ajax does is to speak for another world while being totally committed to his own … Ajax does not change but he is allowed to know what change means.’ Cf. also Holt, Philip, ‘Ajax' Ailment’, Ramus 9 (1980), 22–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who sees it as one of the play's great ironies that ‘the fullest and most eloquent appreciation of the law of change is spoken neither by the goddess who declares it nor by the mortal who so wisely obeys it, but by the hero who most stoutly resists it’ (29).

13. Whitman, C. H., Sophocles: A Study of Heroic Humanism (Cambridge, Mass., 1951), 72f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, comments on the strange mixture of flaws and greatness in Ajax.

14. Gellie, op. cit. (n.9 above), 15, sees the conflict of Ajax the individual set against the cooperative world of group loyalties and interrelationships as represented by Tecmessa, the chorus, Menelaus, Agamemnon and Odysseus.

15. Wilamowitz, op. cit. (n.2 above), i. 128.

16. See Her. 574ff.

17. See Heracles’ words at 575f. and 1270ff., where the generalised plural distances the labours.

18. His assumption that the labours are all in Heracles' imagination is eloquently stated by Verrall, A. W. in Four Plays of Euripides (Cambridge, 1905), 141 ffGoogle Scholar.

19. Wilamowitz, op. cit. (n.2 above), i.127f.

20. See Chalk, op. cit. (n.10 above), 12ff., and particularly the conclusion on pp. 14f.

21. Adkins, A. W. H., ‘Basic Greek Values in Euripides’ Hecuba and Hercules Furens’, CQ n.s. 16 (1966), 193-219, esp. 209ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. and the conclusion on pp.217-9.

22. Her. 1425f., quoted below, p. 120.

23. Adkins, op. cit. (n.21 above), 215.

24. See n.9 above. Holt, op. cit. (n.12 above), 22, makes the point that Ajax' madness is ‘nothing more, and nothing less, than a failure to see things correctly — a delusion that he was killing and torturing Greek warriors when in fact he was only venting his wrath upon sheep and cattle.’

25. Her. 922-1015.

26. Compare Bacchae 1259-1301 with Her. 1111-45.

27. Aj. 766ff.

28. See nn.15 and 17 above.

29. See n. 12 above. In his article there cited, Holt draws attention to the role of time in Ajax' perception of change (29): ‘The author of change is impersonal time (646f.), not meddlesome gods, and Ajax finds his examples of change in the natural order of the world (669-76), not in supernatural disruptions of that order.’

30. Even though there are other motivations too, such as the fear of cowardice and the desire for a glorious reputation in Athens.

31. Compare with it an equally rare protest in Sophocles Trach. 1266ff.