Laura Henry discusses the history and myth behind Ajax.
“[Ajax] stepped out, as formidable as gigantic Ares, wading into the ranks of men, when Zeus drives them to battle in bloodletting fury. Huge as that, the bastion of Akhaians loomed and grinned, his face a cruel mask, his legs moving in great strides. He shook his long spear doubled by its pointing shadow, and the Argives exalted. Now the Trojans felt a painful trembling in the knees, and even Hektor’s heart thumped in his chest…” –The Iliad, Book 7, Lines 244–254 (Translated by Robert Fitzgerald)
Amidst the horrific carnage and chaos of the Trojan War, the colossal warrior Ajax was described in Homer’s Iliad as a “tower,” “stout-hearted,” and even “godlike.” Ajax was a pillar of strength for the Greek army, preventing total defeat on many occasions. The qualities that made him an exceptional soldier also gave him a brutal character: steadfast but extremely stubborn; brave, but also brash; self-reliant, but extremely selfish. However, it is precisely his uncompromising way of life that many ancient Athenians idolized.
The mythic era of the Trojan War was woven into the fabric of Athenian culture. The ancient Greeks drew inspiration from stories of the ten-year struggle and prayed to heroes like Ajax, believing that they could intervene in real events. As a Greek champion, Ajax was worshipped by a hero-cult, and some Athenian aristocrats claimed to be descended from his line. He even inspired a few popular drinking songs.
The Trojan War began as many do – with a toxic combination of pride, greed and rage. Years before the war, a golden apple inscribed with “For the Fairest” had rolled to rest at the feet of Athena, Hera and Aphrodite. Refusing to settle the question of who deserved the apple, Zeus chose Paris, Prince of Troy, to judge. Each goddess enticed Paris with favors and rewards, but in the end he declared Aphrodite to be the fairest of the three. In return, Aphrodite promised him the love of Helen, the most beautiful woman in the Greek world.
With Aphrodite’s help, Paris visited Sparta and convinced Helen to abandon her husband, King Menelaus, and return with him to Troy. Enraged, Menelaus begged his brother Agamemnon to help him exact revenge and bring Helen back to Sparta. Together they gathered allies from across the Greek world, who were eager to plunder the vastly wealthy city of Troy.
Ajax captained the troops from the island of Salamis. He was impatient to earn glory in battle as his father Telamon had before him. Standing head and shoulders above anyone else, Ajax was second only to Achilles in courage and strength. He was also fiercely honest, despising the kind of artful trickery for which his Greek comrade Odysseus was so famous.
The Greeks laid siege to Troy for ten years. Late in the war, Achilles withdrew from the fighting and the Greek army teetered on the edge of defeat. But when the Trojan prince Hector slaughtered Achilles’s friend Patroclus, Achilles sought revenge, viciously killing Hector and turning the tide of battle. When Achilles was slain some weeks later, a fierce struggle raged over the corpse on the battlefield. Refusing to let the Trojans take Achilles away, Ajax picked up the body and charged through enemy lines to safety, while Odysseus covered his back.
At Achilles’s funeral, a god decided that Achilles’s divinely-made armor would be awarded to the most courageous Greek left alive at Troy. Only Ajax and Odysseus dared to claim that title. Though there are differing accounts of the competition, the outcome is the same: the armor was awarded to Odysseus. Embittered and insulted, Ajax was convinced that the contest had been fixed. From then on, Odysseus became his sworn enemy.
In contrast to Ajax, Odysseus possessed rationality and strategy, adaptability and the capacity for compromise. Not long after Ajax died, the Greek commanders used Odysseus’s infamous Trojan Horse to sneak inside the city walls and defeat the Trojans. With this triumph of intellect and strategy, the kind of fearless and individualistic heroism of Achilles and Ajax became obsolete. Cunning, not courage, had won the Trojan War.
Sophocles invites us to compare these two types of heroism: unbendable strength and strategic flexibility. Some scholars have seen Odysseus’s intellect and ability to see other points of view as critical military skills that were also valuable in civil society. But Ajax made no concessions on his personal code of honor. Intensely devoted to his principles, he refused to submit to leaders that he felt were wrong, regardless of the consequences. That supreme commitment to honor, however rigid or difficult, is admirable too.
In The Odyssey, Odysseus travels to the Underworld on his way home from the war and encounters Ajax once again. Having long ago let go of the dispute between them, Odysseus approaches his old comrade, pleading: “Ajax, son of the noble Telamon; could not even death itself make you forget your anger with me on account of those fatal arms? It was the gods that made them a curse to us Argives. What a tower of strength we lost when you fell! We have never ceased to mourn your death as truly as we lament Achilles, Peleus’s son….Draw near, my lord, and hear what I have to say. Curb your anger and conquer your obstinate pride.” But Ajax, immovable as ever, walks away silently – even in death, an indelible tower of strength.
By Laura Henry, a second-year dramaturgy student in the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University.
