INTRODUCTION

Summary

§ 1. Among the plays of Sophocles there were many, as titles and fragments show, of which the scene was laid at Troy, and of which the action was founded on the epics of the Trojan cycle. This series ranged over the whole course of the ten years' war, from its earliest incidents, as told in the Cypria, down to the fall of the city, as told in the Iliupersis. The Philoctetes is connected with this series, but the Ajax is the only remaining piece which actually belongs to it. The story is taken from sources later than the Iliad, but the conception of the hero, though modified by that later legend, is fundamentally Homeric.

The Ajax of the Iliad

In the Iliad, Ajax, the son of Telamon, comes to Troy from Salamis with twelve ships, and is stationed on the extreme left of the army, at the east end of the camp,—as Achilles holds the corresponding post of honour on the right. He is an independent chief,—subject only to the allegiance which all the chiefs owe to the Captain General, Agamemnon. There is no reference to his descent from Aeacus; nor is there anything that connects him especially with Athens. He has a well-recognised rank as being, next to Achilles, the greatest warrior in the Greek army. Gigantic in stature—taller by a head and shoulders than his fellows—and of a massive frame, he is emphatically the ‘bulwark’ of the Greek host.