Silent by Convention?: Sophocles' Tekmessa

I. Dramatic Conventions

Female characters in Athenian tragedy are, as a rule, more often vocal than silent. Often the men around them perceive their speech as a threat to masculine order, and go to some lengths to silence them, but the women speak nonetheless. It must be considered remarkable, therefore, when a female character who has spoken forcefully and authoritatively for two-thirds of a play exits, only to return as a mute character played by a non-speaking "extra." This is exactly what happens in Sophocles' Ajax, and the event is all the more surprising because we would expect Tekmessa to have good reason to speak when she returns. After all, as a recent critic has suggested, "Sophocles . . . seems to have felt that the full extent of Ajax' fall . . . could be best appreciated in the presence of his wife."¹ Surely the pathos of the scene could be greatly increased by having Ajax's wife lament her dead husband. Why, then, does Sophocles render this all important presence a silent one?

The simple answer relies on stage convention. Odysseus must resolve the dispute between Agamemnon and Teukros; all three must be onstage, and in speaking roles, at the same time.² But this answer ignores an important feature of Tekmessa's long silence, namely that from her entrance at 1168 until Odysseus' at 1315, the original audience cannot have known that Tekmessa was a silent character.³ Since she speaks throughout the early portion of the play, her subsequent silence must come as something of a surprise. Characters leaving the stage to return as mute, particularly those in major roles, are quite rare, and Tekmessa's silence is unique in several respects.⁴ The closest parallel is Alcestis at the end of Euripides' Alcestis, though there the other characters on stage give an explicit explanation for her silence.⁵ In Ajax no such explanation is proffered; rather, Sophocles creates a dazzling series of entrances and exits that surround and emphasize Tekmessa's silence. I suggest, therefore, that in this play Tekmessa's silence is not an inevitable result of the three-actor rule, but that Sophocles toys with the three-actor rule and the use of mute characters specifically in order to mark and justify Tekmessa's silent presence. In this way a social convention-that women in Athens were not to be heard-is reinforced and validated by dramatic convention, even in unconventional circumstances.

Consider first the set of exits and entrances that make Tekmessa's silence possible and, eventually, necessary. Although earlier in the play Tekmessa had been on stage with Ajax and her son Eurysakes (544), she apparently left the child by the tents while searching for her husband. Thus, when Teukros enters, it seems that he sends Tekmessa to fetch the boy (986).⁶ At 1042 Menelaos begins his entrance, and Teukros and Menelaos have their bitter argument. Menelaos leaves at 1160. Almost immediately (1168) Tekmessa and Eurysakes return. Bear in mind that we have no reason to suspect that Tekmessa is a mute character at this point-only she, the boy (too young for a speaking part), and Teukros are on stage with the chorus. After a brief dedicatory offering, Teukros leaves to set up a tomb (1184). In less than 200 lines, we have seen three exits and two entrances. This is closer to the pace of farce than that of tragedy.

As Teukros leaves, the chorus begins a song. When they are finished, the audience must expect that Tekmessa will begin to lament her dead husband. She is the only speaking character (so far as we know) left on the stage, and furthermore her entrance was properly announced by Teukros, just as if she were a speaking character:

Look, just at the right time these two are near,the son and wife of this man . . .⁷

(1168-69)

It would certainly be in character and within the bounds of the genre for her to do so. In fact, lament of the dead is a traditional role for women in real life, in tragedy, and in its epic precursors.^8...