7. Language

Abstract

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’.