tone, but which, after it ceased to be enforced from without, had gained new strength in his heart. Welcker regards the change as more sudden, though perfectly natural, as the excitement of a feeling which had hitherto slept in the hero's breast, and had at length been roused by the shock with which the gods had humbled his pride, and had finally been called into distinct action by the contagion of female tenderness. He compares it to the effect produced on the temper of Achilles by the loss of his friend. The prayers of Tecmessa are not indeed the cause, but the occasion: yet they decide the mood in which Ajax henceforth contemplates his relations to the gods and to mankind, and in which he ends his life. He considers his blood as a libation with which he is about to appease the wrath of the offended goddess, and to atone for the violence he had meditated against legitimate authority. The hearers naturally mistake the nature of this purifying bath. The mode in which he mentions his purpose of burying his sword may perhaps seem more difficult to reconcile with this view, and Welcker's remark, that the alledged motive, the calamitous operation of an enemy's gifts, was a current opinion which Ajax again expresses in his last speech, seems hardly sufficient to remove the appearance which this passage at first sight presents of a deliberate intention to mislead. Ajax designing to fall upon his sword, speaks only of hiding it as an illfated weapon in the ground. Could he, it may be asked, but for the sake of deception, have raised an image so different from the act which he was meditating. The sword might indeed be said to be concealed, when the hilt was fixed in the ground and the blade lodged in his body: but since this hiding produced the most fatal consequences instead of averting them, would he have selected this mode of describing his intended deed, if he had not foreseen that it would be misunderstood? This seems scarcely possible if it had been only the fatality of the weapon that he had in his thoughts. But perhaps it may be more easily conceived, if we suppose him to have reflected on it rather as having been once the object of his pride, a tribute of respect to his valour from a respected enemy, and afterward the instrument of his shame. He was now about to expiate his pride, and to wipe off his shame: in both respects he might be truly said to hide his sword in
