πέπαυται, sc. “ὁ Αἴας τῆς νόσου”: cp. 279. The subject to εὐτυχεῖν is rather “ἡμᾶς” than “αὐτόν”: the thought is, “δοκῶ ὅτι εὐτυχοῖμεν ἄν”. Cp. O. T. 87“λέγω γὰρ καὶ τὰ δύσφοῤ, εἰ τύχοι ι κατ᾽ ὀρθὸν ἐξελθόντα, πάντ᾽ ἂν εὐτυχεῖν”. In the omission of the subject to the inf., as in “πέπαυται” and in “τοῦ κακοῦ”, there is a shade of reticence which suits the recent sense of horror in the speaker's mind. φρούδου γὰρ κ.τ.λ.: the gen. is not absol., but depends on λόγος. Cp. fr. 346 “μύχθου γὰρ οὐδεὶς τοῦ παρελθόντος λόγος”. Their thought is that, if he is himself again, his value to the Greeks will plead for pardon of his frenzy.
This text is part of:
Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part VII: The Ajax. Sir Richard C. Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1907.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.