#ajaxblogging

[finelythreadedsky]

ooh it doesn't really work in the space of an ancient theater but it would be so fun to do ajax in a proscenium theater and play with the idea of who can see the audience and when. athena keeps looking out at the audience during the prologue as if she's addressing us as much as odysseus. after she puts on her little play-within-a-play for odysseus he turns directly to the audience and delivers his "i see that we are nothing but shadows and images" line. maybe while he's mad in the prologue ajax can see the audience, but once he returns to his senses he can't, until the moment he's on stage alone about to die.

[finelythreadedsky]

ok wait when athena addresses odysseus in the prologue of ajax

καὶ νῦν ἐπὶ σκηναῖς σε ναυτικαῖς ὁρῶ | Αἴαντος, ἔνθα τάξιν ἐσχάτην ἔχει

guys i've been so focused on the skene as a point of conjunction between the dramatic world of the play and the reality of the audience for plays set at the camp at troy but. i think sophocles' tetralogy went last at the dionysia this year. and/or ajax was the last of his three tragedies. like yeah on one level it's because homer situates ajax on one edge of the camp and achilles at the other. but on another level...

[finelythreadedsky]

But of a random question, but do we know whether Erysakes would be considered a nothos like Teucer? I'm curious since most of the focus in the Ajax is on Teucer and Tecmessa's status after hus death

I actually recently read an article that argued (among other things) that Eurysaces and Tecmessa are sort of retroactively legitimized by Ajax's death-- while Ajax is alive there's the possibility that he could marry a higher status Greek woman and have legitimate children by her, which would classify Tecmessa as a concubine and Eurysaces as a nothos born to a foreign slave, but after Ajax is dead it's clear that Eurysaces is his heir, as the only son he's ever going to have, and Tecmessa is the mother of his heir and therefore his wife and widow. The article was pointing out that a lot of Tecmessa's actions in the second half of the play take the form of playing the role of the legitimate citizen-wife in order to reinforce her son's status as Ajax's heir.

So their status in kind of limbo while Ajax is still alive (and at Troy). If he lives and goes back home to Salamis and has children by a free Greek wife, then Eurysaces would be a nothos, displaced by a legitimate fully-Greek half-brother the same way that Teucer is a nothos because Telamon already has Ajax, a legitimate fully-Greek son, and incidentally the same way Medea fears her children will be displaced by half-brothers born to a Greek woman. A son isn't a nothos unless, or until, there are more legitimate half-brother claimants, and Ajax's death ends the possibility of there ever being any other claimant to displace Eurysaces.

And of course all of this is in the context of the citizenship laws of Pericles about Athenian citizen children having to be born to an Athenian citizen mother as well as an Athenian citizen father, which don't strictly apply to mythic settings, but the issues are very much present, especially since Sophocles frames Ajax and Salamis as very Attic/Athenian.

(Ormand 1996, "Silent by Convention? Sophocles’ Tekmessa," AJP 117, jstor.org/stable/1562152)

[finelythreadedsky]

very strange when the chorus of ajax curses the man who invented war by saying "he did not allot to me... the sweet sound of the aulos" (1199-1204). they are singing this choral ode to the accompaniment of the aulos.

[finelythreadedsky]

solving the staging problems in sophocles' ajax by introducing a second, smaller skene in front of the normal one

[finelythreadedsky]

a little fuzz in the scribal transmission but the messenger from teucer says that calchas τήνδε δ᾽ ἔξοδον ὀλεθρίαν Αἴαντος ἐλπίζει φέρειν, "thinks this exit brings ajax's doom"??? and exodos is, in basic theatrical terms, what you call an exit from the playing space. and then tecmessa immediately tells the chorus ζητεῖτ᾽ ἰόντες τἀνδρὸς ἔξοδον κακήν "go and find the man's awful exit" and one hemichorus goes out each exodos!

[finelythreadedsky]

thinking about doing some fun translation with the word διδάσκω and cognates in tragedy as "script" or "direct" or "stage manage" or some such... Ajax is κακὰ δεννάζων ῥήμαθʼ, ἃ δαίμων | κοὐδεὶς ἀνδρῶν ἐδίδαξεν, "abusing him with evil words which a god scripted, not a human", Orestes calls himself διδαχθεὶς ἐν κακοῖς "stage-managed amidst miseries", Pentheus threatens the maenads τῆς σῆς δʼ ἀνοίας τόνδε τὸν διδάσκαλον | δίκην μέτειμι, "I'll exact punishment on the artistic director of your stupidity"

[finelythreadedsky]

like. is εἴδωλον (or σκιά) as concrete a practical theatrical term as πρόσωπον. that's really my question. can εἴδωλον mean (in terms of the whole body) portrayal/costume/role in the way that πρόσωπον means face/mask/role? is a "performance" of a character an εἴδωλον????