These two passages from Sophocles illustrate meanings of tu/xh close to the etymological history of the related verb teu/xw, tugxa/nw (tau 435, tau 1147, 'hit, meet'). Events that cannot be or are not foreseen “strike us as blows” of fortune, of chance or of the gods; they become part of our fate or lot in life; they are our vicissitudes. See the bibliography below for the long and useful section on Sophocles and Herodotus in Villard Leglay's dissertation (314-76), distinguishing their period as replacing the joyous Pindaric use of tu/xh for hitting the target of victory and joy in battle or sport with the concept that its uncontrollable vicissitudes threaten the supremacy of human reason, planning and foresight; cf. tau 1234 for this use in Thucydides. See also the studies of Oedipus and tu/xh by Vernant and Knox, and Busch's treatment of tu/xh in Euripides.
The first passage quoted is Ajax 1028-33 (web address 1), also in part at alpha 2769 (for its use of a)/ntuges) and pi 2299. Teucer is pointing to the dead body of Ajax and holding the bloodstained (ai)o/los, alphaiota 253) sword on which he had fallen, the gift of Hector. This speech is represented in several other Suda entries (alpha 3638, alpha 3679, kappa 1882, mu 1019, omicron 750, pi 1933, pi 3069; cf. gamma 284, kappa 1288). Teucer compares the unforeseeable blows of fate suffered by Hector (epsilon 683) and Ajax (tau 253, cf. alpha 3901) at the end of their lives, and refers to a famous exchange of gifts between the two (Homer, Iliad 7.303-05), mentioned by Ajax in the play (661ff., web address 2) with an ominous reflection on the consequences of exchanging gifts with an enemy (665) that became proverbial (alpha 519, alpha 1144, epsilon 4028, mu 1234).
The second passage, the one explicitly attributed to Sophocles, is Philoctetes 1316-20 (web address 3). Philoctetes could not avoid the woes of his past, but now has the choice whether to prolong them or not. Here Neoptolemus [Author, Myth] argues in contemporary legalistic terms that his stubborn decision (not to go to Troy) is harmful also to the Achaeans and constitutes a legal injury to them.
[1] Teucer, here and in the following sentence, points to the dead body on stage.
[2] The passive participle used here (from the verb for sawing, abrading: web address 4, and see pi 2299) is particularly violent and rich in overtones. A dog bites with his teeth and hangs on; an angry man gnashes his teeth; the metal buckle of a belt often pierces its clasp, as we must imagine in the scene described. The participle is modified by one or two adverbial phrases: 'by the belt' and, probably, 'from the chariot rail', though the latter may also be taken with the main verb.
[3] See alpha 2769 for this circular rail, protecting the front and sides of the chariot platform. The dying man, presumably thus attached by a waist-size belt in front of Achilles, would have been visible to him, and literally sawed into by the spinning wheels on either side of him.
[4] Another violent verb, of torturing by a fuller's carding comb, bending, twisting mangling (web address 5). It is also transmitted in our mss in the archaic form gna/ptet' or gna/mptet’.
[5] This version of the dragging of Hector's body round the walls of Troy by Achilles differs from Homer, Iliad 22.395ff. (web address 6), where Hector is already dead. See the appendix to Jebb's edition of the play for possible sources. Vergil describes Hector’s feet as swollen (Aeneid 2.273, pedes tumentes), a sign that he was not yet dead at the time.
[6] The quotation omits the direct object of the verb, which has been given in the preceding line (1315): "listen to the things I desire to obtain (tuxei=n, cf. epsilon 3344) from you." Note the double genitive with tuxei=n, for the object aimed at and the person from whom it is desired.
[7] A commonplace in Sophocles: see also Oedipus at Colonus 1694, fr. 584 Pearson/Radt (512 D). Villard Leglay discusses at length the tu/xh qe/wn (cf. Philoctetes 1326) as deriving from the notion of the gods crafting human suffering (a normal use of teu/xw, tau 435).
[8] This is a notable use of the legal concept of voluntary torts or injuries, discussed at length by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics Book 5 (chs. 8-9, 1135a17-6b14, web addresses 7-9), where the long sentence 1135b11-25, distinguishing voluntary from involuntary blabai/ (beta 313), is mispunctuated in some modern texts, such as Bywater's on Perseus (see R.R. Dyer, 'Aristotle's categories of voluntary torts,' Classical Review 15, 1965, 250-252), but not in Rackham's translation and note there. Neoptolemus argues in legalistic fashion that Philoctetes' refusal voluntarily injures not only himself but others and therefore constitutes a crime under (sc. Athenian) law.