Verbal Adjectives in Sophocles: Necessity and Morality

Abstract

IN HIS RECENT BOOK, Shame and Necessity, B. Williams identifies verbal ending in -T?Oq, -T?a, -T0ov as frequent form speech with Sophocles' heroes. This impersonal expression necessity, he says, is just one ways in which these characters express insistence, refusal, defiance, and other intransigent attitudes, which often evoke from others, equally, expressions necessity.1 Williams quotes Ajax 690, '76 yp od ji' cpycacya ( father, what did you say? What are you doing to me? [1203]). He also cites Oedipus' &pKT?ov and &KOua-TcOV (OT 628 and 1170), must rule and must hear, and comments, There are many other examples.2 Some these were noted thirty years ago by B. Knox in The Heroic Temper.3 Knox grouped [t]he use verbal adjective with that of future tenses and above all tone which brooks no argument as characteristic [Sophoclean] hero's resolve to act.4 He quoted not only Ajax 690 but also Ajax 470-72, REIp6 Ttm 4riTflT?a / Totd6' dp' i 7ypoVTt 61Qk6X) RaTpt / P] TOt pUcyV 7 `Y7Rka7XvO ?K KEtVOu 7E769 (Some enterprise must be sought which will show my aged father I am no cowardly son) and Ajax 853, a'& &pKKTOV T6 tp&yta abV TdXEt TtVi (I must begin work, and fast), as well as OT 628 and 1170 and Electra 1019-20, ad)k aU'T6oXtpi pot p6V TE 6paYT?ov / TOUp7oV T66' (I must do this deed alone and with my own hand). Knox did no more than note heroes' use verbal adjective, but Williams makes this same observation point departure for an analysis kind necessity they are expressing through this construction. He argues convincingly that it is not a matter a Kantian categorical imperative, involving the 'must' duty, nor Kant's hypothetical imperative,