The Madness of Ajax

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The Madness of Ajax is the story of how the great Telamonian Ajax, the strongest Greek at Troy after Achilles, lost the contest for the dead Achilles’ armor to Odysseus, was driven mad by Athena, slaughtered a flock of animals he took for his enemies, and killed himself on his sword. Sophocles’ tragedy Ajax is the fullest ancient account.

Agamemnon’s Decision

After Achilles died, his armor was offered as a prize for the bravest of the Greeks, and only Ajax and Odysseus came forward to claim it (Apollodorus, Epitome 5.6). In the Odyssey Odysseus says that Achilles’ mother, Thetis, set the arms as a prize and that “the sons of the Trojans and Pallas Athena” judged the case (Odyssey 11.545–547). Apollodorus likewise says the judges were the Trojans or, according to some, the allies, and that Odysseus was preferred. Other writers have the Greeks themselves decide: in Pindar the Greeks cast secret votes (Nemean 8.26), and in Ovid the assembled chiefs hear the two heroes plead and give the armor to Odysseus, the better speaker (Metamorphoses 13.1–383). In Sophocles the verdict is blamed on the sons of Atreus, Agamemnon and Menelaus, who Ajax says gave the arms to a man of all tricks, though Achilles himself, had he lived, would have judged Ajax the winner (Ajax 441–446). The sources therefore do not agree on who made the final decision.

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Ajax’s Demise

The Madness of Ajax

Ajax took the verdict as an insult. According to Sophocles, he rose in the night and set out alone to kill the Greek leaders and Odysseus, and had reached the tents of the commanders when Athena turned his mind aside, casting distorted fancies on his eyes (Ajax 40–52). Instead of the Greeks he attacked the army’s captured herds and their herdsmen. In the opening scene he tells Athena, who stands beside him, that the men he has killed will no longer dishonor him, and that Odysseus is tied up inside his tent, waiting to be flogged to death (Ajax 91–110). Athena, Sophocles says, was already angry with Ajax because he had answered his father’s advice to win with the gods’ help by boasting that he could win without them, and had told the goddess herself to go and help other Greeks (Ajax 758–777). Apollodorus gives a short account of the same event: Athena drove Ajax mad and turned him, sword in hand, among the cattle, and in his frenzy he slaughtered the cattle with the herdsmen, taking them for the Achaeans (Epitome 5.6).

In the play the chorus later learns what he did in his madness. He drove captive sheep home, killed some of them, and tied up two rams. One he beheaded and the other he fastened upright to a pillar and flogged with a horse’s halter, hurling insults at it (Ajax 233–244). He took the ram to be Odysseus.

Ajax’s Suicide

When Ajax came to his senses and saw what he had done, he cried out that his very name, Aias, now matched his sorrows, and decided that a noble man must either live well or die well (Ajax 430–433, 479–480). He asked the sailors to tell his half-brother Teucer to take his young son Eurysaces, whose mother was Tecmessa, home to Telamon and Eriboea, and he left the boy his great shield (Ajax 560–577). He said he would hide the sword that was Hector’s gift and that had brought him no good from the Greeks (Ajax 658–665). Hector and Ajax had exchanged gifts after their duel, Hector giving a sword and Ajax a belt (Iliad 7.303–305). Alone on the shore, Ajax fixed the sword upright in the ground of the Trojan land, prayed to Zeus that Teucer be the first to find him, and called on the Erinyes to destroy the Atreidae as he was perishing by his own hand (Ajax 815–844). Then he fell on the sword. Ovid’s Ajax is not mad but overcome by grief: he takes up the sword that is “certainly mine” and says it will be wet with the blood of its master, “that no one but Ajax may conquer Ajax” (Metamorphoses 13.384–392).

Ajax’s Flower

Ovid says that Ajax’s hands could not pull out the blade, but the blood itself forced it out, and the reddened earth bore a purple flower from the green turf, the same flower that had once sprung from the Oebalian wound (that of Hyacinthus). The same letters, shared by the boy and the man, are written on its petals: for Ajax they stand for his name, for Hyacinthus they were a cry of lament (Metamorphoses 13.394–398). The cry is “ai”, which Sophocles also hears in the name Aias when Ajax laments that his name matches his sorrows (Ajax 430–432).

Ajax in the Asphodel Fields

Odysseus Meets the Dead Ajax

In the Odyssey, Odysseus tells the Phaeacians that when he visited the dead, the other souls stood grieving, but the soul of Ajax stood apart, still angry about the victory. Odysseus wishes he had not won such a prize, since the earth now covered so noble a head; Ajax, he says, was the finest and strongest of the Danaans after Achilles (Odyssey 11.543–551).

Odysseus Tries to Soothe Ajax

Odysseus spoke to Ajax with gentle words. Would he not forget his anger even in death? The gods had brought grief on the Greeks, who mourned Ajax as they mourned Achilles; no one else was to blame except Zeus, who hated the army and gave Ajax his doom. He asked Ajax to come near and hear his words and to master his proud spirit. Ajax made no answer and went off into Erebus among the other souls of the dead (Odyssey 11.552–564).

The Body of Ajax

In Sophocles, a messenger reports that the prophet Calchas had told Teucer to keep Ajax in his tent that one day, if he wished ever to see him alive again, because Athena’s anger would drive him only through that day (Ajax 746–757). Teucer came too late. Tecmessa found Ajax dead, and Menelaus came forward and forbade anyone to bury him, saying the body would be thrown out on the sand as food for the shore birds (Ajax 1047–1048, 1062–1065). Ajax himself had prayed that Teucer find him first, so that he would not be thrown to the dogs and birds (Ajax 826–830). Teucer defied Menelaus and then Agamemnon, who called him the son of a captive woman (Ajax 1226–1228). Odysseus, arriving at the shouting, said that he had hated Ajax while it was honorable to hate him, but would not see the best man among the Argives at Troy, after Achilles, dishonored; to refuse burial would be to trample on the laws of the gods (Ajax 1332–1347). Agamemnon gave way, saying Ajax would stay his enemy but that Odysseus might act as he wished (Ajax 1366–1373). Teucer thanked Odysseus but would not let him touch the grave, and ordered a hollow grave dug and a tripod set over fire for the ritual washing (Ajax 1394–1406).

Apollodorus gives a different ending: Agamemnon forbade the body to be burned, and Ajax alone of those who fell at Troy was buried in a coffin (Epitome 5.7). Strabo records a monument and temple of Ajax on the shore beside Rhoeteium, in the Troad (Strabo 13.1.30).

Sources

Sophocles, Ajax 40–52, 91–110, 233–244, 430–446, 479–480, 560–577, 658–665, 746–777, 815–844, 826–830, 1047–1065, 1226–1228, 1332–1406; Homer, Iliad 7.303–305; Homer, Odyssey 11.543–564; Apollodorus, Epitome 5.6–7; Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.1–398; Pindar, Nemean 8.26; Strabo 13.1.30.