θάκει δὲ προστρόπαιος: cp. Aesch. Eum. 41“ἕδραν ἔχοντα προστρόπαιον”. Here “θάκει” denotes a kneeling posture (“προσπεσών” 1181): cp. Soph. Ph. 293“γονυπετεῖς ἕδρας προσπίτνω ς᾿”, O.T. 2 “ἕδρας..θοάζετε” (n.). The offerings in the child's hands will show that he formally supplicates (“προστρέπεται”, cp. 831) the “χθόνιοι θεοί” and the spirit of the dead man to avert outrage from the corpse. κόμας, offerings to the dead, as in Il. 23. 135, where the locks of hair are laid on the corpse (“θριξὶ δὲ πάντα νέκυν καταείνυσαν, ἃς ἐπέβαλλον ι κειρόμενοι”). So in El. 449 f. Chrysothemis is told to lay locks of her own hair and her sister's on Agamemnon's tomb,—the significance of the act being marked by the prayer which is to follow the gift: “αἰτοῦ δὲ προσπίτνουσα γῆθεν εὐμενῆ ι ἡμῖν ἀρωγὸν αὐτὸν εἰς ἐχθροὺς μολεῖν” (453 f.). In its primitive symbolism the severed hair meant that the person from whose head it was cut devoted himself to the dead, and (as it were) escorted him to the shades; the gift of hair being a substitute for self-immolation at the grave. τρίτου, marking the completion of the lucky number; O. C. 7 f. “αἱ πάθαι..χὡ χρόνος”.. | ..“καὶ τὸ γενναῖον τρίτον”: Aesch. Eum. 758 ff. “Παλλάδος καὶ Λοξίου ι ἕκατι καὶ τοῦ πάντα κραίνοντος τρίτου ι Σωτῆρος”.
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.