liar privileges.[1] They claimed his sons as their adopted citizens, the ancestors of their noblest families and some of their most illustrious men. But the hero's title to those religious honours which were paid to him in the time of Sophocles, commenced only from his interment: and hence no subject could be more interesting to the Athenians in general, and more particularly to the tribe which bore his name,[2] than the contest on the issue of which his heroic sanctity depended. Welcker very happily remarks that Menelaus and his brother fill the part of an Advocatus Diaboli at a process of canonization. On the other hand the injury which Ajax had planned against the army and its chiefs, was one which according to primitive usage, in ordinary cases, would have justified the extreme of hostility on their part, and consequently the privation of funeral rites. This was not in the eyes of the Greeks a mean insult, but a natural and legitimate mode of vengeance; though the violence and arrogance with which it is prosecuted by the Spartan king is exhibited in an odious light, undoubtedly for the sake of suggesting to the Athenian audience a political application to their rivals, which was especially happy in a piece dedicated to the honour of an Attic hero, and which they would not fail to seize and enjoy. But this strenuous opposition serves to exalt the character of Ajax, and to enhance the glory of his triumph. And thus the contrast between the appearance and the reality is completed, as in the second Œdipus. At the beginning we saw the hero in the depth of degradation, an object of mockery and of pity: this was the effect of his inordinate self esteem, of his overweening confidence in his own strength. But out of his
- ↑ See the honours of the Æantidæ in Plut. Symp. 1. 10. 2. 3. They were peculiarly connected with the glory of Marathon. Marathon itself belonged to them: they occupied the right wing in the battle: they numbered the polemarch Callimachus among their citizens: Miltiades was a descendant of Ajax (Marcellin. Vit. Thuc.); the decree for the expedition was made under their presidency. At Platæa too they acquitted themselves so nobly, that they were appointed to conduct the sacrifice to the Sphragitides on Cithæron. Their chorusses were never to take the last place. Plutarch thinks that this was not so much the reward of merit, as a propitiation of the hero, who could not brook defeat. One may compare the use made of this topic by the rhetorician whose funeral oration is printed among the works of Demosthenes: οὐκ ἐλάνθανεν Αἰαντίδας, ὅτι τῶν ἀριστείων στερηθεὶς Αἴας ἀβίωτον ἑαυτῷ ἡγήσατο τὸν βίον.
- ↑ To which Welcker with great probability refers the allusion in the line (861) κλειναί τ᾽ Ἀθῆναι καὶ τὸ σύντροφον γένος. If the tribe furnished the chorus, the local application would be still more pointed.
