Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The mythologizing of history
- 2 Antigone, Pericles and Alcibiades
- 3 Oedipus Tyrannus, Alcibiades, Cleon and Aspasia
- 4 Ajax, Alcibiades and Andocides
- 5 Philoctetes, Alcibiades, Andocides and Pericles
- 6 Alcibiades in exile: Euripides' Cyclops
- 7 Oedipus at Colonus, Alcibiades and Critias
- 8 Critias and Alcibiades: Euripides' Bacchae
- 9 Alcibiades and Melos: Thucydides 5.84–116
- 10 Thucydides on tyrannicides: not a “digression”
- 11 Alcibiades and Persia (and more Thucydidean “digressions”)
- 12 Alcibiades and Critias in the Gorgias: Plato's “fine satire”
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index locorum
- Index
4 - Ajax, Alcibiades and Andocides
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The mythologizing of history
- 2 Antigone, Pericles and Alcibiades
- 3 Oedipus Tyrannus, Alcibiades, Cleon and Aspasia
- 4 Ajax, Alcibiades and Andocides
- 5 Philoctetes, Alcibiades, Andocides and Pericles
- 6 Alcibiades in exile: Euripides' Cyclops
- 7 Oedipus at Colonus, Alcibiades and Critias
- 8 Critias and Alcibiades: Euripides' Bacchae
- 9 Alcibiades and Melos: Thucydides 5.84–116
- 10 Thucydides on tyrannicides: not a “digression”
- 11 Alcibiades and Persia (and more Thucydidean “digressions”)
- 12 Alcibiades and Critias in the Gorgias: Plato's “fine satire”
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index locorum
- Index
Summary
Mention was made above (p. vii) to the role of pity and fear in Athenian tragedy. There can have been few plays in which such notions were engendered to a greater extent than in Sophocles' Ajax. But before we can indulge in any micro-political analysis of the play, we need to know when it was first performed.
Today, “general opinion among scholars … favours a date in the later 440's” for Ajax. This assertion is becoming gradually more muted – “all we can say in the present state of the evidence is that nothing contradicts a date in the 440s, but that certainty is impossible”, or “the dating of Sophocles' play to the early 440s – if correct” – but it is the brave critic who disregards the consensus that Ajax is relatively early and who rejects the scholarship that has been devoted to a study of supposed Sophoclean stylistic development. The study of style, it should be said, is not always helpful; indeed it can be positively misleading. That it plays such a prominent role at all is due to misplaced respect for J. J. Winckelmann, concerning whose contribution to science Wilamowitz unwittingly gave the game away in stating:
In producing a history of style such as no scholar had ever dreamed of in the domain of either poetry or prose, Winckelmann set an example which all succeeding ages should look up to with admiration. It is the source of the sap that has made almost every branch of our science grow and put forth leaves.
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- Information
- Sophocles and AlcibiadesAthenian Politics in Ancient Greek Literature, pp. 47 - 58Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2008