S4, Episode 2: The Allies of Ajax

[00:00:00] Kristen: Hi, my name is Kristen, and welcome to the second episode of Season 4. This season plans to focus on the character of Odysseus, though we will not actually be touching on the Odyssey today. Rather, the play Ajax by Sophocles will take our focus. In it, Odysseus serves as a moral foil to Ajax, who represents the heroic age maxim of helping your friends and harming your foes.

The play focuses on critiquing this code, and Odysseus becomes a mouthpiece for the new, better way Sophocles aims to propose. In this episode, we are going to dig a bit deeper into this critique, and look at a scene where Tegmesa, Ajax’s wife, implores Ajax’s companions to help him when he is in immense distress.

For this section, we are joined by my wonderful co host Kayla. Hi. Alright, let’s start things off with a brief recap of the plot so far. Prior to the play starting, Ajax loses a contest against Odysseus for the right to claim the armor of Achilles. This outraged Ajax, and he quickly came to see Odysseus, Agamemnon, and the rest of the Achaeans as his enemies.

Plotting to slaughter them all when he sets out to do so. However, Athena casts an illusion over him, causing him to think that the nearby livestock and other animals were the men he sought to kill after he massacres and even tortures his supposed enemies, Athena reveals to him their true nature and Ajax becomes inconsolable in his shame.

This is where our scene picks up with his wife Tenessa, explaining to Ajax friends what she has witnessed. The full extent of the lines for this section are lines 284 to 345, and because this is quite a large chunk, we will read and talk about them in small parts. Starting us off, I will read a translation by Ian Johnson.

I challenged him and said, what are you doing, Ajax? Why are you going out like this? There’s been no summons, no messenger, nor any trumpet call. All the army is now sleeping. His reply to me was brief, the old refrain, woman, the finest thing that females do is hold their tongue. So I, taking my cue from that, did not respond, and he charged out alone.

Those last few lines are what particularly intrigue me here. Techmessa is undoubtedly his ally, yet he seems to speak to her so harshly. Let’s look at the Greek and confirm a few things. We see line 2, 92 read, Ae dum numina. Bai means short or small, so we know he’s being curt with his words to her. And ae dum numina means always singing.

Not like singing a song, but rather how we sometimes say you might sing someone’s praises, for example. It’s regular speech, but with an air of theatrics and importance. To be always singing in this manner means he often harps on her with whatever it is he’s about to say. And here we have it.

Most literally, he says, This phrase, spoken often, denies Tecmesa a place by his side, and in the classification of friends versus enemy, she lands in some nebulous, neutral category for Ajax. Almost like he doesn’t see her. The sexism is quite potent here. Quite a few translations, including the one we just read, make it seem like this is a phrase common in the way that an idiom is.

That many others besides just Ajax say this to women in general, and I am inclined to agree. Translates most literally as The thing’s always being sung. Kayla, do you have any thoughts on this or other aspects of the passage?

[00:03:48] Kayla: Yeah, so I feel like Tecna’s status as a war pri as a war prize really plays into the way Ajax treats her and his sexism towards her.

Um, the very fact that she’s a war prize, meaning that Ajax won her in war, Like, her personhood means that she’s an object. There’s this sort of power dynamic. She’s like a slave to him, um, and there’s not an equal relationship here. They don’t have an equal relationship, and we’ll see that later in the passage that they are not equal.

She is scared of him. Um, and it also ties into this, because she’s a war prize, Ajax might see her as less than him. So she Ajax might see himself as less than him. greater or more deserving and seeing her as lesser or even subhuman, maybe tying into this nebulous neutral category of not a friend, but not really an enemy.

Um, and then we’re going to talk more about the friend versus an enemy a lot later, but it’s really interesting that she’s in this sort of nebulous category where she’s not really considered a friend. Um, but at the same time, she’s not his enemy because obviously he tried to kill all of the people he thought were his enemies.

[00:05:04] Kristen: So, once Tecmesa finishes recounting what has happened to Ajax, she ends her long speech with a final plea to Ajax’s friends that reads as follows, My friends, you should come in and help him, if that’s possible. That’s why I came out here, for words from friends can cure a man like him. I want to spend some time on that last line and pick up the Greek a bit.

The original text of line 330 reads as [speaking greek]

My personal translation of this would be for men such as this are conquered by the words of French. This last line really stands out to me, particularly because of the use of Toyota in the Greek. This is the word that provides that generalizing aspect for the statement men such as this. I think this really opens the door to talking about Ajax as an archetype within his world rather than just assuming his behavior is the default expectation, such as this implies other options after all.

[00:06:14] Kayla: Yeah, so this is something we brought up in class when you taught, um, but Ajax here really seems to correspond with our modern ideas of toxic masculinity. Um, so not only do. Men such as these listen to words from their friends, not, say, words of their wives. Um, he also hurls insults at Thaqmesa during this speech.

So in line 312 of this speech that Thaqmesa has, she says, [speaking greek]. Which is some fun little alliteration there. But what she says is, he hurled insults at me. Um, when he figured out what happened, when he realized he had killed animals and not the Greeks. So he’s kind of, we get this look at almost domestic abuse, really.

And we see Tecnesa be scared of him and fear him. In lines 315 and 317, Tecnesa says, [speaking greek]

So, and I, friends, having feared that he brought this to completion, um, I spoke everything just as I had understood it. So, so, um, Ajax insults her, throws like horrible words at her, and demands to know what happened. And Takumasa fears him and tells him exactly what happened just as she knows it because she’s scared.

Um. So we get this really, like, scary look at what an abusive household might have looked like in this, in this piece of literature, and how Ajax is not supposed to be this good guy, really. He’s this horrible and scary man who attacked his own comrades or people who were once his comrades. And I think also, going back to the passage Kristen just pointed out, from Philon to LeGoyce in line.

330. Um, it’s really interesting how that line uses the verb to conquer, which in the line, it’s Nikontai. It, the verb brings up contexts of war. It means to win, kind of like Nike and like the brand in modern day. It really refers to status as like a warlike hero, very violent, vicious and scary. Um, Kristen, do you have anything to add there?

Very true.

[00:09:19] Kristen: There’s another great example of this from earlier that we skipped over and I’d like to look at it now. It’s lines three 17 to 3 22. Uh, this translations from Sir Richard Jeb, but he immediately groaned mournful groans, such as I had never heard from him before, or he has always taught that such wailing was for cowardly and low hearted men.

He used to grieve quietly, without the sound of loud weeping, but instead moaned low like a bull. The idea that strong men don’t cry feels shockingly familiar to our modern ears. Um, the closing line of men such as this from earlier did not seem to imply that Ajax’s friends were similarly inclined, but as fellow soldiers and brothers in arms, they certainly must have had some shared experiences and worldviews.

During her dialogue, Tichmessa describes to them how Ajax’s conversation with Athena appeared to her. At last, he charged out through the doorway and forced out some words of conversation with a shadow. Sometimes he’d talk about the Sons of Atreus, at other times about Odysseus, with manic laughter at how by going out he had avenged all their arrogance in full.

So this paints a really interesting picture for us of Hekmesa seeing him speak to shadows quite literally. We know that this is when he’s speaking with Athena, but she cannot see Athena. Um, but this is kind of not pushed aside, but gone along with like a, like a normal part of some kind of madness or sickness that is, almost expectant of his behavior?

[00:11:07] Kayla: Yeah, so the disease that they’re really talking about here is Ajax’s madness that inspired him to kill the Achaeans, the sort of madness, I mean, we don’t get, it’s not like Athena didn’t put it, the idea in his head to kill the Achaeans, she just disguised some animals as the Achaeans and made him, made him think he was killing the Greeks by slaughtering the animals, but this sort of madness, this insanity.

He brought upon himself when he went mad with anger, arrogance towards his loss for the arms of Achilles.

[00:11:49] Kristen: There’s another quote that comes later from the chorus when they actually get to see Ajax, um, where they say, I think the man is sick or still suffering the effects of that disease he had before. They’re everywhere around him where he sits. And there, it just feels very ominous. So, where, where does this all sit with respect to the heroic age maxim is where we want to kind of try to draw this discussion.

[00:12:23] Kayla: So, the heroic age maxim is this sort of name that we’ve given to an idea that in Greek is, is translated into English as to treat your friends well and treat your enemies poorly. That’s a sort of major theme that Sophocles really picks up in the Ajax.

[00:12:43] Kristen: Within the play, uh, because Sophocles is aiming to critique this moral code, and by using Odysseus trying to present a better way forward, Ajax is made to be the logical extreme of that moral code.

So, obviously, going forth and slaughtering his enemies, who used to be his friends, but that has all of its own nuance and points going on. But with his friends, and that definition of where an Ajax, someone who is very willing to have people swap sides of that coin, swap sides of that maxim, Where the people who actually stay his friends sit.

[00:13:30] Kayla: Yeah, so like you said, Ajax really is this extreme. He kills his enemies. That’s probably one of the most extreme things I think you can do to an enemy. But Sophocles is critiquing this idea. And we see that in the fact that Ajax isn’t presented as a good guy. As I mentioned above, he’s sort of this.

Modern readers can sort of understand him under the guise of toxic masculinity. He’s clearly not a good guy, but we have to have pity for him anyway. We don’t treat him poorly because he treated us poorly. And that’s one thing the character of Odysseus, although not present in this passage, really brings out in Ajax.

[00:14:20] Kristen: One of the other things that’s important to consider when talking about, uh, modern perspectives with Ajax, though, is being careful not to just see one or two signs of, oh, this is a lot like modern day toxic masculinity, and start trying to see everything through that lens.

[00:14:39] Kayla: Yeah, in reading ancient works, we definitely have to be really careful not to superimpose modern day standards onto ancient characters and people.

We have to read through the, read through the text, and we can lift out those elements and say, this is maybe a good way to understand him under the framework of toxic masculinity, but we don’t want to read him with the idea that he should be.

[00:15:06] Kristen: For instance, in modern day, we heavily associate sexism with toxic masculinity, but that can very well not be the case with Ajax here. As we were looking at in those passages, it seems like telling women to shut up and mind their place is not just something Ajax does. All of these issues with his not wanting to cry and With all this idea about how he, quote, used to grieve quietly without the sound of loud weeping, him not wanting to openly cry because it would make him see, as Tegmese describes, cowardly and low hearted, that could just very well be an Ajax, something that he or maybe his soldiers as well deal with, but that would just be their little microcosm that’s not expanded to all of the Greek world, whereas The sexism, as we historically know, especially in Athens, very much was.

That wouldn’t have been part of this special type of individual that Sophocles is making Ajax to be.

[00:16:14] Kayla: Yeah. Regardless, though, Sophocles is definitely using Ajax as, you know, The one example of this heroic age maxim we mentioned earlier that, you know, this isn’t how you should really live your life. It’s not really a good moral code to follow.

And we see that throughout the rest of the play.

[00:16:41] Kristen: And with that, I think we’re going to wrap up the main section. Uh, I want to say thank you again to Kayla for joining me and having such wonderful input. This has been a lot of fun. Overall, I found being Teacher of the Day to be quite fun, actually. Um, as usual for me, I clammed up in the beginning.

I do this any time I start doing any kind of public speaking. It’s all about getting started, and once I kind of start running my mouth a bit more, um, things flow a little bit more naturally. The things more or less went how I planned. There was quite a bit that came up in conversation that I was really, really glad that we got to.

Um, I focused more during this podcast on stuff that came up that I hadn’t necessarily noticed and then thought was interesting and wanted to explore on my own. So instead of planning my lesson around, Being able to make a podcast out of it later, I ended up kind of doing the opposite of making the podcast in response to how the teaching went.

Uh, either way, I feel like it worked out. Because I did have plans for how I wanted to discussion the flow, I very much felt like some kind of evil schemer with a nefarious Secret plot, as I kind of would nudge conversation different ways. Um, I, I did like that aspect, honestly. It was very entertaining for me.

I, I felt very at once in control, but also just kind of going with the flow because where I went with things was entirely dependent on some of the responses that I got. So, overall, it was a really fun experience. I like this style of lecture, I’ve never tried to do it before, um, but I think I had a really good experience with it.

I’ve been Kristen, and this has been episode 2, season 4 of Musings in Greek Literature. Next week, my co host Kayla will take the reins and lead the next episode. If you enjoyed this episode or any episode of this podcast so far, please feel free to drop a comment or submit a review so others can find it.

Thank you very much for listening, and goodbye.