THE TRAGEDIANS AS LYRIC POETS THE LYRIC POEMS OF GREEK TRAGEDY

("with co-nurtured ternper": fourth), rppsv 010\300- / Ta ("shepherd

of his wits"; second), <ppEVO\3pW ("wits-destroying"; third).
The ode is a lament for lost aret 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 aret. 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 lostaret, 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 aret 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<pIa rrop' o<pOl ("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 eudaimn 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 olv (604), -
pathetic, now, with Xpvep TpUX~EVO ("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-
KEIVLaa~("O glorious Salamis") is Ka ~Ol buo8EpOlTEUTO Al- / c
("Ajax hard to cure"); to OfbllOV f\lbav ("invisible [destroying?]
Hades") is ~EOI'ATpEbOl ("wretched Atreidae"). Other related
terms modulate from stanza to stanza: voierc ("you dwell," first),
E<pEbpO,~vauo ("sitting by," "consorting with," second); lTaOI
o<p' ou Xpvo ... Xpvep TpUX~EVO ("since ancient time ...
worn-out by time;" first), lTaOIt ~tv OVTpO<pO upo
("co-nurtured with an ancient day"; third), OUVTp<pOI/ pvci
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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."
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
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