might still consider himself as an injured man, and invoke the Furies to avenge his wrongs, than that he might believe himself an object of divine favour, notwithstanding the offences against the gods which he was about to expiate. The curse itself, after the example of Œdipus, will not be thought an indication of peculiar ferocity. Only that it should have been extended to the whole army, may seem an excess of vindictive cruelty, and in fact this has proved a stumbling block to several critics. But it must be remembered, in the first place, that the army had sanctioned and shared the iniquity of its chiefs, in withholding from Ajax the honours he had earned in their service; and next, that the ruin of the king involves the calamity of the people. So Achilles can not distinguish between Agamemnon and the Greeks[1]. With the exception of this curse, which however answers the purpose of recalling the heroes wrongs to our recollection, and thus strengthening our sympathy with his sufferings, the whole speech is highly pathetic, so that any expression of arrogant impiety would jar most offensively with its general tenor. And hence it is of some importance to observe, that there is nothing at all savouring of such a character in the address to Jupiter, where Ajax speaks of his petition as requesting no great boon (ἀιτήσομαι δέ σ᾽ οὐ μακρὸν γέρας λαχεῖν). Mr Campbell, in his Lectures on Poetry, has entirely mistaken the force of this expression, where he says that we recognize the self dependence and stubbornness of his pride, when he tells the chief of the gods that he had but a slight boon to implore of him. Not
- ↑ These considerations seem sufficient to remove the difficulty which Hermann finds in the common construction of the words (844) γεύεσθε, μὴ φείδεσθε πανδήμου στρατοῦ, which, ifγεύεσθε is referred to στρατοῦ, appear to him to breathe the most atrocious inhumanity. The construction he proposes, referring γεύεσθε to the Atridæ, is so harsh that one is glad to dispense with it, and yet is of very little use in softening the alledged atrocity of the imprecation. Another difficulty which has perplexed the commentators in this passage is less connected with our present subject. The curse manifestly contains a prediction which was meant to conform to the event: yet the words πρὸς των φιλίστων ἐκγόνων ὀλοίατο, cannot be reconciled with history without great violence, as by distinguishing between φιλίστων and ἐκγόνων, in the manner proposed by Musgrave. Hermann's interpretation is intolerably strained and perplexed. There is no necessity for supposing that Ajax has Ulysses in view at all. From him he had received a provocation indeed, but no peculiar wrong, which he should call upon the Furies to avenge. Welcker thinks that the easiest solution of the difficulty is to suppose that a line has dropt out after αὐτοσφαγεῖς, containing an allusion to Clytemnæstra's crime and punishment.
