Source Verification: Ajax
Every claim below is either what a named ancient source attests, in its own line or section, or a point where the sources themselves disagree.
What the Sources Attest
Is this Ajax the same person as Ajax the Lesser?
No. This Ajax, son of Telamon and king of Salamis, is a different and much more prominent figure than Ajax the Lesser, son of Oileus, a smaller, faster commander from Locris. Homer's Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad lists them as separate men leading separate contingents from separate cities; the two are alike only in name and in fighting on the same Greek side at Troy.
Source: Homer, Iliad, Book 2
Who won the duel between Ajax and Hector?
Neither. Ajax and Hector fight in single combat for a full day, trading spear-casts and then blows with boulders and swords, until heralds sent by Zeus call the fight off at nightfall as an even match. Rather than parting as enemies, the two exchange gifts of respect: Hector gives Ajax his sword, and Ajax gives Hector his war-belt.
Source: Homer, Iliad 7.206-312
Why did Ajax kill himself?
After Achilles's death, the Greek army awards his divine armor to Odysseus rather than to Ajax, judging cunning speech over raw strength. Ajax cannot bear the humiliation; Sophocles's tragedy Ajax has Athena drive him mad so that he slaughters the army's livestock believing them to be the commanders who voted against him, and when his sanity returns and he grasps what he has done, shame drives him to fall on his own sword.
Source: Sophocles, Ajax
What sword did Ajax use to kill himself?
In Sophocles's tragedy Ajax, he kills himself with the sword Hector gave him as a gift of mutual respect after their inconclusive duel in the Iliad, planting it upright in the ground of enemy Trojan soil before falling on it. The detail turns a token of a fair fight between honorable enemies into the instrument of Ajax's own death.
Source: Sophocles, Ajax
What happened to Ajax's body after his death?
Agamemnon, still resentful, forbade the usual cremation given to the Greek dead at Troy, so Ajax alone among those who fell at Ilium was buried whole in a coffin rather than burned, at a site called Rhoeteum on the Trojan coast.
Source: Apollodorus, Epitome 5.7
Where Accounts Differ
- ajax-lesser-disambiguation
- telamon-peleus-kinship-variant
- Homer's Iliad never narrates Achilles's death, the contest for his armor, or Ajax's suicide; those events are supplied by later tradition, dramatized fully in Sophocles's Ajax and summarized plainly in Apollodorus's Epitome.
- Apollodorus records a variant genealogy from Pherecydes in which Telamon was Peleus's friend rather than his brother, which would make Ajax and Achilles close comrades rather than literal first cousins; this entry follows the mainstream account in which both are sons of Aeacus.
- This Ajax, son of Telamon, is routinely confused with the more minor Ajax the Lesser, son of Oileus; the two are distinguished as separate commanders as early as Homer's own Catalogue of Ships.
Sources
- Homer, Iliad, Book 2
- Homer, Iliad, Book 3
- Homer, Iliad 7.206-312
- Apollodorus, Library 3.12.6
- Apollodorus, Epitome 5.6
- Apollodorus, Epitome 5.7
- Sophocles, Ajax
- Apollodorus, Epitome 5.22
- Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)