Melancholy, Love, and Time: Boundaries of the Self in Ancient Literature

7. Passing Time: Hunting, Poetry, and Leisure

Passing Time Hunting, Poetry, and Leisure Vladimir: That passed the time. Estragon: It would have passed in any case. Vladimir: Yes, but not so rapidly. —samuel beckett, Waiting for Godot Preserved for us on an amphora in the Vatican Museum under the name of the black-figure painter Exekias (fig. 8) is a remarkable evocation of ancient leisure.1 Two men, the greatest of the Greek warriors at Troy, sit opposite one another playing at a game on a board. These warriors are Achilles and Ajax. The scene in Exekias’s painting takes place during the Trojan War. It is situated in what must be a brief interlude during or immediately before the fighting around the walls of the citadel.2 Exekias (who flourished in third quarter of the sixth century B.C.E.) makes unequivocal this temporal location. Achilles is fully armed. His helmet is on, as if he were ready at any moment to go to battle. His two javelins rest instantly available on his left shoulder, and his hand grasps them. His shield, propped just behind him, is within easy reach. The lesser figure of Ajax mirrors that of Achilles in all respects except one: his helmet rests on his nearby shield.3 Despite the absence of a helmet, Ajax, too, is ready for battle: the pair of javelins resting on his left shoulder makes this quite apparent.4 The focus of the picture, however, is not on the two warriors. It is on the box where their game is being conducted. We can barely make out the game. But it is quite clear what they are doing. The warriors’ concentration on that box is total. The viewer is drawn toward it with them. Our eyes are led to the game by the way that their figures (their very backs and even their musculature ) curve inward toward it, by the way that their arms reach toward it, by the way that their eyes, noses, foreheads (and Achilles’ helmet plume), thighs, lower legs, and feet point toward it. The bases of the two pairs of javelins are 222 7 
fixed on either side of the game box, as if more firmly to anchor the viewer’s concentration on the game.5 The hands of Achilles and Ajax are poised over the board with striking deliberation . We sense that this very deliberation will shortly be produced for their many victims on the battlefield. The contrast that this brings out, between the pacific and trivial nature of the game and the terrible and bloody events in which Achilles and Ajax are about to participate, is breathtaking.6 These two heroes will shortly abandon this most convivial of pastimes and participate in the most protracted, bloody, and famous of all ancient conflicts. This war will eventually claim both Achilles’ and Ajax’s lives.7 It will cause untold sufferings for the Trojans, as well as the destruction of their city. But not for the present. Passing Time
223 Fig. 8. Exekias, “Achilles and Ajax” (ca. 530 B.C.E.). (Photography courtesy of Vatican Museums.) [To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.] At this moment, the two heroes, distracted and content, seem to have no consciousness of the terrible events in which they are key players. The enormity of this realization is to be contrasted with the calm and apparent unimportance of their current activity, the game. Exekias’s vision of how free time may be occupied is constructed around a series of polarities or juxtapositions. This is evident in, for example, the simple contrast between the threatening and purposeful martial habiliment of Achilles and Ajax, between the striking physiques of Achilles and Ajax and the triviality of the game, between the ornate beauty of their dress and its martial purpose . There are also polarities evident between the calm of the warriors and the disordered world of war that they will soon enter, between the board game itself and the serious business of war that is soon to come, between the weapons and the game board, between the way the fighters’ hands are outstretched in this picture and how we know they will soon be outstretched on the battlefield. These juxtapositions emphasize the deliberate purposelessness of their play. It would be easy, when viewing Exekias’s remarkable evocation of leisure, to interpret it in some way as expressing a tragic vision...