Ajax

Son of Telamon of Salamis — second only to Achilles among the Achaean spear-fighters, called by Homer the bulwark of the army. When Achilles withdrew, Ajax held the centre against Hector's onslaught and the firing of the ships in *Iliad* 13-15, and when Achilles fell at the Scaean Gate it was Ajax and Odysseus together who recovered the body. The contest of arms that followed went to Odysseus by the rigged vote of the Atreids; Sophocles's *Ajax* dramatises the consequence — Athena maddens him into slaughtering the army's cattle thinking them his rivals, and at dawn, shamed beyond endurance, he plants his sword in the sand and falls on it.

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