• aka Telamonian Ajax, Ajax the Great/Greater (as opposed to Ajax, son of Oileus)
• Son of Telamon and Periboea
• hence he is called 'Telamonian' Ajax
  
• Telamon was Zeus' son
• Periboea's parentage has different versions: daughter of Alcathous of Salamis
• Half-brother of Teucer: by Telamon's 2nd wife, Hesione (daughter of Laomedon of Troy!)
  
• Achilles' cousin!
• For those who are interested in Athenian history, Alcibiades, Cimon, and Miltiades claim descent from Ajax (illustrates how 'real,' immediate, and significant the heroic age was to Ancient Greeks)

Workshop of Diosphos Painter, white-ground lekythos (small oil container), 5th c.BCE
By Workshop of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Diosphos_Painter&quot; class=&quot;extiw&quot; title=&quot;w:en:Diosphos Painter&quot;&gt;&lt;span title=&quot;ancient attic-greek vase-painter of black-figure and white-ground styles&quot;&gt;Diosphos Painter&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jastrow&quot; title=&quot;User:Jastrow&quot;&gt;Marie-Lan Nguyen&lt;/a&gt; (2011), <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5" title="Creative Commons Attribution 2.5">CC BY 2.5</a>, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14913532">Link</a>

Another Diosphos vase with Hector and Achilles:

MFA Boston vase of Athena, Ajax, and Achilles

• Tecmessa
• A Phrygian noble woman
• Ajax killed her father and took her captive
• Cf. Briseis: Achilles slew her 3 brothers and her father and took her captive
  

• Ajax in Homer
  
• He is a defensive warrior, not helped by gods much, no great aristeia
  
• In Ajax, he is said to have spurned the gods' help in battle: that is why Athena has it out for him.
• Called 2nd greatest fighter after Achilles
  
• Fights alongside of Teucer: Ajax holds the shield covering both, Teucer wields the bow.
• Rescues Patroclus' body.
  
• Later Teucer protects Ajax' body.
  
• Iliad 7 has a long fight between Hector and Ajax: it is a draw with gifts exchanged at the end (Hector gave him the sword on which he kills himself in Ajax).
• Teucer and Hector are cousins.
  
• In book 16, Hector and Ajax fight again, at the ships: one ship is burnt.

• In the Aethiopis, part of the epic cycle:
•  He and Odysseus fight defend Achilles' body and bring it back to be buried with Patroclus.
• Both Ajax and Odysseus claim Achilles' armor
  
• Ajax also appears in Little Iliad, another work in the 'Epic Cycle'
• From a summary of Little Iliad found in Proclus, Chrestomathy:
  
• (1) The awarding of the armor takes place, and Odysseus gets it in accord with Athena’s wishes. Ajax goes insane, savages the Achaeans’ plundered livestock, and kills himself. <Agamemnon prevents his body being cremated; he is the only one of those who died at Ilion to lie in a coffin. His tomb is at Rhoiteion.>

• 2 Scholiast on Aristophanes, Knights

• There was a dispute over the prize for valor between Ajax and Odysseus, as the author of the Little Iliad says, and Nestor advised the Greeks to send some men to below the Trojans’ wall to eavesdrop concerning the bravery of the heroes in question. They heard some girls arguing, one of whom said that Ajax was much better than Odysseus, explaining: Ajax, after all, lifted up the warrior son of Peleus and carried him out of the fighting, but noble Odysseus would not. But the other retorted, by providence of Athena, What did you say? How can you be so wrong? Even a woman could carry a load, if a man put it onto her, but she couldn’t fight.

• 
• Ajax carries dead Achilles: in Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.
• By &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Antimenes_Painter&quot; class=&quot;extiw&quot; title=&quot;w:en:Antimenes Painter&quot;&gt;&lt;span title=&quot;Ancient Greek Attic artist, vase painter, active between circa 530 and 510 BC.&quot;&gt;Antimenes Painter&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Walters_Art_Museum&quot; class=&quot;extiw&quot; title=&quot;w:en:Walters Art Museum&quot;&gt;&lt;span title=&quot;art museum in Baltimore, Maryland, United States&quot;&gt;Walters Art Museum&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://thewalters.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; class=&quot;external text&quot; href=&quot;https://thewalters.org/&quot;&gt;Home page&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;https://art.thewalters.org/detail/18168&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; class=&quot;external text&quot; href=&quot;https://art.thewalters.org/detail/18168&quot;&gt;Info about artwork&lt;/a&gt;, Public Domain, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18846276">Link</a>
• Pindar refers to Ajax more than once too. Pindar's poems were celebrations of athletic victories that often invoked mythology.
  
• Aeschylus wrote a play about how he died as well.
• Side note: Sophocles also wrote a play titled Eurysace, about Ajax' son, of which we have the title and one short fragment.

By Unknown artist - &lt;a href=&quot;//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jastrow&quot; title=&quot;User:Jastrow&quot;&gt;Jastrow&lt;/a&gt; (2006), Public Domain, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1518659">Link</a>
Artist unknown: circa 400-350.

• Overall, what is the Ajax?
  
• Conflict between brute warrior prowess and peace-time existence?
• The Ancient Greek functional equivalent of a dramatic treatment of a mental health issue?
• but is that a fair assessment? 'functional equivalent' could hide a lot of attitudes, views, and understandings.
  
• Meditation on capriciousness of the gods and what a human can do in the face of that?
• Athena: playing favorites? bearing a grudge? or dispensing justice? some of both?
• How does she compare with Athena in the Eumenides? elsewhere?
  
• Role of suffering in learning?
• Note that suffering and learning are tied together strongly in the Oresteia
  
• Conflict of honor with self?
  
• Is Ajax selfish?  Is selfishness even a "thing" in this play?
  
• Ajax is more than a "sore loser": he is a victim. Meditation on that dynamic?

• A "Tragedy of stubbornness"
• The template for a "Tragedy of stubbornness" is as follows:
  
• The hero takes a position and pursues it with no compromise, but also not even any interest in compromise.
• Often an untenable position.
• But the hero is willing to die for it, and destroy others for it.
• Remember what was said about the "heroic code": the hero can stand up for their own honor even if it harms their people.
  
• Often the hero has one virtue that is tremendously developed
• ...and another that is neglected or weak.
• Compare the Hippolytus, where Hippolytus' devotion to Artemis is to the exclusion of Aphrodite: very different but equally a tragedy of stubbornness

Attributed to the Brygos Painter
- &lt;a href=&quot;//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Remi_Mathis&quot; title=&quot;User:Remi Mathis&quot;&gt;Remi Mathis&lt;/a&gt; (2011), <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0" title="Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17668448">Link</a>

• Echoes of Iliad enrich the play:
  
• Tecmessa asking Ajax not to commit suicide clearly resembles Andromache asking Hector to be mindful of her fate in Iliad (the scene where his helmet scares his son, and she says he is everything to her).
• But in Ajax and Hector's prayers, Ajax's pride contrasts strongly with Hector's modesty.
• But as we hear them, we know that Astyanax/Scamander will die thrown from the walls of Troy.
• ...and we know that Eurysace will be venerated in Athens as a hero and will be king of Salamis.
• So Hector's prayer will go unfulfilled, while Ajax' will be fulfilled.

• Mixing the past with the present
  
• A few gems from Ruth Scodel in her article 'Tragedy and Epic'  in the volume A Companion to Tragedy edited by Rebecca Bushnell:
• In the debate between Teucer and the Atridae at the end of the play:
  
• Is Ajax the homeric hero who is entitled to demand and defend honor, even if that destroys others, perhaps everyone?
  
• The first half seems more "Homeric"
• The second half is much more concerned with contemporary Athenian concerns:
  
• Is he like an Athenian military leader whom the city expects to be loyal even if they mistreat him?
• Is he an Athenian ally or a representative of one?
• The take-home to those questions is not a simple answer that he is one of them and not the others.
• The take-home is that tragedy mixes the past with the present.
  
• We can find anachronisms (how can Orestes in Sophocles compete in the Pythian games when they have not been founded yet?)
• But they are beside the point and certainly not blemishes
  
• The point is that the past informs the present and the present informs the past: they coexist in a sense and comment on each other.
  
• The tragedy is bringing on a contemplation of how the past and present relate, commenting on each, perhaps not with any specific observation, but with a juxtaposition of them and a discussion that has implications that may even be contradictory.
• Problematization, not solution
  
• In the Oresteia, we had the following mixture:
• Aeschylus imagines into the heroic past a court founding and legal procedure
• But killing Agamemnon is a coup d'état, which was a frequent reality in Greek city-states, and certainly a feared possibility even more often than a reality: so Aeschylus has used the past to meditate on a contemporary dynamic.

• Archaeology buffs:
• There was a dig on Salamis that uncovered a Mycenaean palace: said to be that of the Aiacids. Near modern Kanakia on the island of Salamis.
• 
• By &lt;a href=&quot;//commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Maximosp1980&amp;amp;action=edit&amp;amp;redlink=1&quot; class=&quot;new&quot; title=&quot;User:Maximosp1980 (page does not exist)&quot;&gt;Maximosp1980&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;int-own-work&quot; lang=&quot;en&quot;&gt;Own work&lt;/span&gt;, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0" title="Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43160514">Link</a>
  

• Art history buffs: the famous Belvedere Torso, so important for Renaissance Italian art, is identified now as Ajax, formerly as Heracles.
  
• It dates from somewhere between 2nd c. BCE and 1st c. CE.
  
• Imported from Greece to Rome: appropriation of art
  
• In the Vatican Museum: more appropriation? (can museums not be appropriation?).
  

By &lt;a href=&quot;//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Clockchime&quot; title=&quot;User:Clockchime&quot;&gt;Clockchime&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;span class=&quot;int-own-work&quot; lang=&quot;en&quot;&gt;Own work&lt;/span&gt;, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0" title="Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46668234">Link</a>

Inscribed 'signature' on Belvedere Torso
By <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jastrow" title="User:Jastrow">Marie-Lan Nguyen</a> (2009), <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0" title="Creative Commons Attribution 3.0">CC BY 3.0</a>, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9035185">Link</a>

• Philoctetes preview
• Sophocles also wrote another play called Philoctetes at Troy
• Euripides and Aeschylus also wrote plays titled Philoctetes, neither of which have survived
  
• The myth says that Philoctetes was the only one who would light Heracles' funeral pyre, and he received an archery bow for that from Heracles.
• He was one of Helen's suitors and so bound to participate in the Trojan war on the Greek side.
• But he was wounded on the way, in the foot, and it smelled so bad that they left him on an island.
  
• Then there was a prophecy (obtained by torturing the Trojan Helenus) that Troy could only be taken with the bow of Heracles.
• So the Greek had to get back the bow.
• And that is what Philoctetes is about: Odysseus and Neoptolemus (Achilles' son) and Diomedes go to find Philoctetes and the bow.