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THE TRAGEDIANS AS LYRIC POETS THE LYRIC POEMS OF GREEK TRAGEDY ("with co-nurtured ternper": fourth), rppsvóç 010\300- / Taç ("shepherd of his wits"; second), <ppEVO\3ÓpWç ("wits-destroying"; third). The ode is a lament for lost aretê but its hi hl char ed emotion that feels time so ee y arete ac leve an pralse s ou ed.'res a bitter-sweet tension of praise and lament that is peculiarly Sop oc ean. Such vibrant originality of form, with its delicately textured surfaces and subtle depths, is perhaps Sophocles' most distinctive, indeed unique, achievement as a Iyric poet. madness, and grieves for the loss ofheroic aretê. That cause of grief, at the close of the stanza, is central to the thought of the ode and to its structure (616-20): The former deeds of his hands of surpassing excellence have fallen, fallen unloved by the agency of the loveless, wretched Aeacids. That lostaretê, then, is the pivot ofthe ode, which wheels from the glory of ancestral Salamis to the envisaged report to Ajax's father of his son's corrupred glory. The inner terms are the sorrow of his helpless depen- dei-It:Sfor Ajax's sickness. The direct reference to lost aretê is an item in a lament. But its position at the centre ofthis ring-ode, the preparatory foil of "glorious Salamis," and the context of the play make it the governing idea. Hence the climactic repetition of ElTW' ElTWE ("have fallen, fallen"), reinforced by the preceding a<pIÀa rrop' o<píÀOlç ("unloved by the agency of the loveless"). The ring-form here is not obtrusive. As in the Second Stasimon of the Antigone it is a concealed base that holds a more fluid form of echoes and images within bounds. Digging a little deeper, we might note the firm chiasmus of sense and sound that describes glorious Salamis, naieis haliplaktos eudaimôn pasin periphantos aiei ("you have your abode beaten by the sea, of happy fortune, illustrious in ali eyes, forever"), the adverb aiei ("forever") by position and by mirroring naieis (" you have your abode") in sense and sound emphasising the island's stability and enduring blessings. What follows is a more Aowing sentence, centering in an echo of olév (604), - pathetic, now, with Xpóvep TpUXÓ~EVOÇ ("worn-out by time") that captures the sense of time drawn out unbearably into the past as memory and promising in the future only death. The invisible (01' de- stroying) Hades, the sailors' fearful prospect, ends the stanza as most visible Salamis, their pasto had begun it. The strophic response to w- KÀEIVàLaÀa~íç("O glorious Salamis") is Kaí ~Ol buo8EpOlTEUTOÇ Al- / cç ("Ajax hard to cure"); to OfbllÀOV f\lbav ("invisible [destroying?] Hades") is ~EÀÉOIÇ'ATpEíbOlÇ ("wretched Atreidae"). Other related terms modulate from stanza to stanza: voierc ("you dwell," first), E<pEbpOÇ,~úvauÀoç ("sitting by," "consorting with," second); lTaÀOIàç o<p' ou Xpóvoç ... Xpóvep TpUXÓ~EVOÇ ("since ancient time ... worn-out by time;" first), lTaÀOIÇt ~tv OÚVTpO<pOÇ óuépo ("co-nurtured with an ancient day"; third), OUVTpÓ<pOIÇ/ õpvciç 60 Euripides While Euripides' choral odes share with those of Aeschylus and Sophocles a fondness for such rhetorical devices as prayer, disclaimer, exemplum, personification, apostrophe, assonance, alliteration, and the like, their distinctive qualities are immediately obvious. With few exceptions they are imagistic rather than symbolic and, like Sophocles' odes, not nearly as profound or monumental as those of Aeschylus. But neither is their imagery quite like Sophocles' imagery. The Euripidean Iyric image is typically both picturesque and lucid, in sharp contrast to the subtle literal-figurative concentrations of Sophoclean Iyricism. And the themes most characteristic ofEuripides' odes are new, or at least a new emphasis, in dramatic Iyric - nostalgia, escapism, and simple, even naive, moralising.ê" Critics are divided both on the intrinsic merits ofEuripides' odes and on their dramatic relevance. The least sympathetic readers tend to dismiss them with pejorative epithets (or epithets used pejoratively) like "pretty," "fanciful," "simple-rninded," "sentimental," "irrelevant." Such stylistic judgements are partly a matter of taste, but they also reAect a somewhat shallow appreciation of Euripides' peculiar strengths as a Iyric poet per se and as a dramatist for whom Aeschylean and Sophoclean kinds of Iyric relevance would be unsuitable (though of course Iyric relevance for ali three tragedians is rooted in the general Greek principies discussed earlier). Barlow, in her most perceptive study, has shown that Euripides' preference for image rather than symbol, and imagery of a particular kind, is one of the keys to reading the tone and understanding the function ofEuripides' odes. She points out, among other things, the clear, visual strength of many of Euripides' images, and the emotional effects created when they conjoin dissimilar elements, such as "fire against stone, winds against canvas, nail scraping flesh, gold set in wood, blood on metal, sun on rock, cloth on tangled grass.'?" Such conjunctions may be intended 61
