“But isn’t it satisfying to laugh at your enemy?”

Here, Athena prepares to call Ajax out from his tent and invites Odysseus to gloat at his misfortune. Athena’s motives and intentions have been a source of debate among scholars. In some cases laughter can be portrayed as a coping mechanism to defuse tension, but it can also tempt a hero into committing outrage (hybris). To laugh at others’ misfortune is unwise, since reversals of fortune make it possible that the one who laughs will become the one who is laughed at. It is possible that Athena is testing Odysseus. 

“Always stand by my side; be my ally forever.”

In this excerpt, Ajax addresses Athena after she has called him out from his tent. At this point, he believes that he succeeded in killing Agamemnon and Menelaus and has Odysseus tied up in his tent. He has thanked Athena for standing by him, not yet realizing that she has foiled his intentions. By ordering the goddess to “stand by my side” and be his “ally,” Ajax seems to be placing himself on a level with the goddess, a sign of the hero’s excess. His insistence on seeing himself as equal to Athena contrasts with Odysseus’s deferential stance (see quote one).

“[…] I pity the poor man

Yoked to this insatiable evil,

Even though he is my enemy.

It could just as easily be me.

We are all insubstantial shadows.

And life is just a flickering dream.”

After Ajax’s outrage in Line 117, Athena points out to Odysseus that Ajax was once the soundest of men. His current disastrous state is evidence of “the power of the gods,” she says (51). The above passage is Odysseus’s response: He feels pity for the man who intended to torture and kill him because he recognizes that Ajax’s condition could be his own, if the gods chose to make it so. His pity could be seen as evidence of his piety, since Odysseus understands and accepts his subordinate position relative to the gods.

“Look on these things and remember:

Never arrogantly boast before the gods,

Nor raise yourself up because you measure

More in strength or weight of wealth.

Just one day can tip the balance of a life.

The gods love the temperate

And hate the transgressor.”

Here, Athena responds to Odysseus’s expression of pity for Ajax, whose experience may offer a cautionary tale of what happens to heroes who hold themselves as equal to the gods. Those who can practice temperance and restraint earn the gods’ favor. Her statement suggests the reason she brought Ajax before Odysseus is less so that he could laugh at his enemy than that he should learn from his mistakes.

“These words are being whispered

By Odysseus and poured in every ear,

Persuasive, credible words—

Consuming each listener who revels

In your misfortune, relishing the rumor

Far more each time it’s told.”

In this passage, the Chorus has heard rumors about Ajax’s shocking act but have not yet learned that the rumors are true. In ancient Greek cosmology, Rumor was a goddess, which speaks to the compulsive power of rumors alluded to here. On another level, this passage could speak to the power of rumor to affect public perception in democratic Athens.

“You’re the daughter of a Phrygian,

But ever since Ajax won you in battle,

He has come to love you deeply.”

The Chorus are asking Tecmessa to tell them what has happened, assuming that she will know the events that have transpired due to her closeness to Ajax. In the context of the play’s themes, by contrasting Tecmessa’s status as a war prize and foreign woman with Ajax’s love for her, this passage expresses another type of reversal of fortune. Tecmessa was a noblewoman who became a slave who became a wife who expects to become a slave again after Ajax takes his life. Her life has been a series of reversals of fortune, due to events entirely out of her control.

“Now he has been laid low by this evil.

He won’t eat or drink or say anything;

He just sits in the midst of his butchery.

I know he is planning to do something terrible;

I hear it in his bitter tormented cries.”

Tecmessa’s description of Ajax here reflects behavior characteristic of grief and potentially the onset of rage. Two notable examples are Achilles in the Iliad and Demeter in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Like Ajax here, both Achilles and Demeter refuse food and drink and isolate themselves, then go on to commit destructive acts (Achilles slaughtering the Trojans, fighting a river god, and killing and defiling Hector, Demeter causing famine that threatens humanity itself). In contrast to Achilles and Demeter, Ajax turns his violent rage against himself.

“Perhaps when he sees me he’ll regain his self-respect.”

Here, the Chorus, in conversation with Tecmessa, is trying to determine whether Ajax has regained his sanity and asks that the doors to his tent be opened so they can see each other. The Greek word translated here as “self-respect” is aidos, which has layers of meaning. It can refer to a sense of shame, modesty, or restraint as well as having regard, respect, or mercy for oneself or others. The implication may be that seeing his people will help Ajax return to a proper sense of himself and reconnect him to his mortal identity and the essential roles he fulfills within his mortal community (comrade, leader, friend, husband, father, son, brother).

“AIAI! Who would have thought the name

I was given would sound out my misery?

AIAS! AJAX! AGONY!

Ajax means agony, so much agony!”

Ajax’s name in Greek is Aias, a play on an expression of grief: aiai. Like Achilles, whose name means ‘grief of the people,’ Ajax’s name evokes his mental state each time it is uttered. Capturing language play is a challenge of translation. In Lines 432-33 of the Greek text, Ajax says that he could cry two or three times.

Here, the translators have captured the language play and the sense of the lines’ meaning by repeating Ajax’s name three times—his Greek name (Aias), its Latinization (Ajax), and its literal meaning (agony).

“Should I go home? Abandon these moorings?

Sail the Aegean and desert the sons of Atreus?

Then how could I face my father, Telamon?

He was crowned with the greatest glory;

I will return from Troy having earned nothing.

How could he stand to even look at me?

It would be unthinkable.”

Ajax tells a story about his father traveling to Troy with Heracles, when that hero sacked the city. Telamon achieved acclaim during this expedition, and the hero’s responsibility is to add to the achievements of his father, further elevating the family name. It is therefore “unthinkable” to Ajax to return home having earned nothing (59). A hero’s prizes are physical manifestations of their achievements and the regard in which their comrades hold them. Ajax lost the arms of Achilles, which created the conflict that led to his disastrous slaughter.

“Ajax, my lord, the force of destiny

Can be the harshest evil we ever endure.

I was the daughter of a free man,

A powerful and wealthy Phrygian,

And now I am a slave. So the gods

Ordained, so your hand enslaved me.

Now I share your life, bound to you in loyalty.”

Here, Tecmessa begs Ajax not to kill himself. Her own experience, from noblewoman to slave, attests to the dramatic reversals of fortune that mortals must endure. Ajax enslaved her, and the implication is that he is now responsible for her. She is asking him to accept his destiny as she has accepted hers.

“You did well. I commend your foresight.”

During Ajax’s rampage, Tecmessa had removed their son from his father’s presence, fearing that he would harm the child. In a practical sense, Ajax appreciates that Tecmessa protected Eurysaces, but he is also commending her ability to think ahead of the moment and beyond her emotions. This is a skill associated with Odysseus’s success returning home in the Odyssey.

“Then how can we not learn restraint?

I must. I have recently come to learn

To hate my enemy while knowing

That one day he may be my friend—

And that I should help my friend but know

That he may one day be my enemy.

For us, friendship is a treacherous harbor.”

This excerpt is from a speech Ajax gives shortly before killing himself. The speech has provoked debate among scholars. On the one hand, it seems that Tecmessa’s words have hit their mark, and Ajax is softening his stance and willing to learn restraint. On the other, it is possible that these statements are for Tecmessa’s benefit, to convince her that he has come to his senses. His statement about friends foreshadows Odysseus’s in his debate with Agamemnon. But while Odysseus sees the shift from enemy to friend as a byproduct of pity for common human fate, Agamemnon sees it as a sign of treachery. This may reflect his continued inflexibility and inevitable suicide, as he finds the conditions of mortality untenable.

“The prophet said that the body

Falls when it grows too great,

Collapsing under god-sent weight.

As with men who forget they’re human

And have ideas above their station,

He was foolish when he left home.”

The messenger has brought Calchas’s prophecy to the Chorus, instructing them that if Ajax is to be saved, he must be kept inside his tent and not left alone. Convinced by Ajax’s previous speech, however, the Chorus believes all is well. The messenger here explains that Ajax did not heed his father’s advice to “win with the help of the gods,” believing that “anyone | Can do well with the help of the gods” (66). He wanted to succeed on his own, evidence that he “forgot” his own mortality and dependence on the gods (68).

“Finally, poor man, it finally happened—

Your unyielding heart

Caught up with you

And fulfilled this terrible fate.”

Here, the Chorus responds to Ajax’s suicide. In his earlier speech, Ajax claimed that he had learned the importance of flexibility, a quality Odysseus exemplifies. In actuality, Ajax was not able to reconcile himself to the need for flexibility, though it is a quality mortals must embrace. With his inflexibility leaving him no place in the mortal world, his death becomes inevitable.

“Where can I go now? Where would I

Be welcome? I who failed you when

You needed me the most. Our father,

Telamon, will hardly greet me with open

Arms when I return home without you.”

Teucer in this passage reflects on how Ajax’s death will affect him. Each member of a community is responsible to and for the other, thus the hero’s death is never individual but touches everyone in his community. Ajax’s death leaves everyone associated with him vulnerable, from Tecmessa and Eurysaces to Teucer and his father.

“Law and order cannot flourish in a city

Where there is no place for fear.”

This excerpt is from Menelaus’s debate with Teucer regarding burial rites for Ajax. Menelaus suggests that fear is a necessary component in establishing law and order, since citizens who do not fear consequences cannot be corralled. Menelaus’s argument has merit in a larger sense, but pity and flexibility are also attributes essential to successful inter- and intra-community relations.

“Teucer, quickly dig out a grave for him

So he will have a final resting place

In a dark tomb, a monument,

Where he will always be remembered.”

After his argument with Teucer, Menelaus departs, presumably to fetch Agamemnon, and the Chorus instructs Teucer to build a tomb for Ajax quickly. The reference to creating a tomb echoes Lines 1062-063, when Menelaus threatens that “no one is powerful enough | to make him a tomb and perform the burial-rites” (75). The tomb of a hero can function as a community touchstone and is a preoccupation of Homeric epic. Sophocles does not explicitly reference this, but ancient audiences may have recognized the latent allusions.

“I won’t listen to you anymore. I can’t even

Understand your babbling foreign tongue.”

During his debate with Teucer, Agamemnon dismisses him as a “babbling” foreigner (80). Without knowing at what time during the fifth century Ajax was produced, it is difficult to determine whether socio-political tensions may be at play in this characterization. The question of who belongs, who is an insider and who an outsider, can be a fraught in democratic Athens, where citizens were directly responsible for the running of the city.

“I am the son of Telamon, and my mother was his prize

For his bravery in the field. She was a royal, the daughter

Of King Laomedon, and this choicest flower was given

To my father by none other than Heracles himself!

I am a noble man, born of two noble parents, and I

Will do everything to defend my brother from disgrace.”

Here, Teucer responds to Agamemnon’s attempt to diminish him as a “nobody” because his mother was enslaved (79). The passage demonstrates the dramatic reversal of fortune that one could experience: Teucer’s mother went from royal to enslaved. In addition, the passage highlights the fame Telamon achieved with the previous generation of heroes. He was part of the expedition to and sack of Troy headed by Heracles, the most famous hero.

“Control your temper, and don’t let

Brutality born of hatred trample justice.”

Odysseus speaks these lines to Agamemnon during their debate over burial rites for Ajax. The passage speaks to the importance of proportion and occasion to the Athens of Sophocles’s time. If Agamemnon cannot restrain himself and hold his temper, he risks making a disastrous decision, as Ajax did. Justice, in this context, may refer not only to the larger abstract sense of what is right but also to making sound judgments.

“AGAMEMNON:

How can you have such a high regard for a dead enemy?

ODYSSEUS:

His excellence denies hatred.

AGAMEMNON:

Such men are volatile and dangerous.

ODYSSEUS:

A friend today could always be a foe tomorrow.”

This exchange between Agamemnon and Odysseus highlights characteristics associated with ancient heroes that differ markedly from modern notions of heroism. Odysseus does not deny that Ajax could be volatile and dangerous, which are qualities heroes were believed to possess in part because of their closeness to the gods. However, his potential volatility does not negate his excellence. Similarly, whether he is friend or foe does not impact the fact of Ajax’s excellence, which should, from Odysseus’s perspective, be the determining factor in whether he is permitted burial.

“AGAMEMNON:

Do you want us to be called cowards?

ODYSSEUS:

No, I want all the Greeks to know you are men of justice.”

In this portion, as in Line 1336, “men of justice” are those who make correct judgments, which is what Odysseus is attempting to persuade Agamemnon to make (83). Agamemnon shows himself inclined to projecting strength and, like Menelaus, provoking fear. The debate between projecting power and exemplifying justice is one that continues to be debated throughout fifth century Athens.