二つのアイアース像

Abstract

Two artistic representations of Ajax, a painting on an Attic lecythus and a bronze Etruscau statuette, both from the Kaeppeli Collection in Basel, suggest that the success of Sophocles' AJAX partly derives from the innovative treatment of the hero's suicide scene. When viewing the former picture of the solitary hero addressing the heavens with his sword fixed in the ground, pointed upwards we may have a glimpse of the scene where the famous farewell speech was delivered by the Ajax of Sophocles' tragedy, since the lecythus can be counected most probably with a votive offering dedicated on the occasion of the victorious production of the play. After the speech, the Ajax-actor must have thrown himself upon the sword in a way somewhat inaginable from the Etruscan bronae statuette. The connection between the statuette and stage action is not so demonstrably close as in the case of the lecythus. However, if we examine the background of the statuette --the activities of Etruscan artists, the tradition of sword acrobatics, dancing at banquets, and the development of the Ajax-myth -- it gives us an idea as to how the actor acted at the very moment of the hero's suicide, making it clear that the sword entered his body somewhere around his left armpit. The legend that Ajax was invulnerable everywhere except in the arntpit was emphatically treated in Aeschylus' THRESSAI. The vulnerability in the armpit, as was most probably first narrated therein, was due to the fact that Heracles had wrapped Ajax in his lion-skin as a child but had left this area exposed because of the bow-case which he wore. The story is not mentioned in Sophocles' play except by one word. But the of the actor, with the vulnerable spot right over the point of would have brought back to the spectator's mind's eye the vivid of the legend and of Aeschylus' play as well. Just as he added epic dimension to dramatic poetry by Homeric allusions, so did Sophocles, by iritroducing an histrionic performance thus at the climactic moment of the another aesthetic dimension to his tragedy. death-jump of the actor, with the vulnerable spot right over the point of the sword, would have brought back to the spectator's mind's eye the vivid pictures of the legend and of Aeschylus' play as well. Just as he added epic dimension to dramatic poetry by means of Homeric allusions, so did Sophocles, by introducing an impressive histrionic performance thus at the climactic moment of the play, add another aesthetic dimension to his tragedy.