THE BOOK WAS DRENCHED - OUDL Home

NOTES FOR AJAX
FOR a general treatment of the various critical problems of the play, the
readers may be referred to the introduction in R. C. Jebb's edition.
R. C. Trevelyan, in the original printing of his translation, points out
that in his version he has so rendered all the choral passages that they
can be used with music written for the original Greek text. It might also
be noted that Trevelyan's form of the name Aias has in the present version
been changed to Ajax throughout.
i. Ajax is alluding to the fact that his cry of lamentation, aiai, closely
accords with the letters of his name, Alas, as it is spelled in the Greek.
2. These lines refer to the former war at Troy in which Heracles and
Telamon, the father of Ajax, participated.
3. The incident is recorded in Book VII of the Iliad, lines 303 ff. where
Hector exchanged his sword for Ajax's belt, "bright with purple."
4. Aerope, wife of Atreus and mother of Agamemnon, was the daughter
of Catreus, King of Crete, according to the version of the legend which
Sophocles is following here.