ἐκοίμισε, gnomic aor., followed by the pres. “λύει”: cp. El. 26“θυμὸν οὐκ ἀπώλεσεν”, | “ἀλλ᾽ ὀρθὸν οὖς ἵστησιν”. The “ἄημα πνευμάτων” is personified as an elemental power (like “τὰ δεινὰ” etc. in 669). That power can either vex the sea, or give it rest; as Aeolus, the “ταμίης ἀνέμων”, has the prerogative, “ἠμὲν παυέμεναι ἠδ᾽ ὀρνύμεν, ὅν κ᾽ ἐθέλῃσι” ( Od. 10. 22). So in 706 “Ἄρης” is a giver of peace. Cp. C. 1. 3. 15 (Notus), “quo non arbiter Hadriae | Maior, tollere seu ponere vult freta.” Vergil may have had Sophocles in mind when he wrote “placataque venti | Dant maria” ( Aen. 3. 69): but when he says, “placidi straverunt aequora venti” ( Aen. 5. 763), the epithet makes all the difference (=“ἄνεμοι λήξαντες”). Lobeck, though he refrains from changing δεινῶν to λείων, thinks that the vulgate can be defended only by supposing that the foregoing verbs, “ὑπείκει, ἐκχωροῦσιν, ἐξίσταται”, tinge ἐκοίμισε with the sense, ‘cease from troubling the sea’: otherwise some addition to “ἄημα”, such as “λῆξαν”, would be needed; cp. Pind. I. 7. 12“δεῖμα..παροιχόμενον ι καρτερὰν ἔπαυσε μέριμναν”. But this difficulty vanishes if “ἄημα” is a personified agency. ἐν δ̓, ‘and among them’; i.e., like the other powers of nature (669). “ἐν δέ” is similarly used in O. T. 27, O. T. 181, Tr. 206.
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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.
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