πρᾶξιν, ‘fortune,’ ‘plight,’ the usual sense of the sing. in Sophocles ( O. C. 560 n.). The word is somewhat strange, since the message announces nothing new which has befallen Ajax, but merely points to an imminent crisis in his fate. This is the true recommendation of the conjecture βάξιν,—not the fact that “πρᾶξιν” recurs in 792. But φέρων … πρᾶξιν may be a reminiscence of Pers. 248(a play of which there are several echoes in the Ajax): “καὶ φέρει” (‘announces’) “σαφές τι πρᾶγος ἐσθλὸν ἢ κακὸν κλύειν.— ἤλγης᾿”: for the aor. cp. 693 n.
This text is part of:
Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part VII: The Ajax. Sir Richard C. Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1907.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.