Ajax (Aias) and Achilles

Ancient Greek Mythology, Religion, Art

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Ajax (Aias) the Great is described as second only to Achilles in Homer's Illiad and he is the only one of the great heroes who does not receive assistance from any of the gods. The great-grandson of Zeus, he is, basically, on his own and yet manages to excel in a way that puts him far above all the other Greeks.

Ajax and Achilles were close friends, with Ajax going out to fight in Achilles' stead when Achilles was sulking in his tent over his argument with Agamemnon. Ajax also personally rescued the armor and body of Achilles after the latter was killed by Paris. He did not, however, fare so well in his competition with Odysseus over that armor - at the behest of Athena, Agamemnon awarded the prize to Odysseus.

Incensed at the injustice, Ajax when mad and proceeded to slaughter the sheep, thinking that they were actually the Greek leaders. After he came to his sense he killed himself with the sword given to him by Hector in order to make up for his shame. Greek legends say that he lives on with Achilles on the island of Leuke. Ajax was venerated on the island of Salamis where the people built a temple in his honor.

The amphora at the top of the page was pained by Exekias on a vase around 530 BCE. Achilles is on the left and Ajax is on the right, both resting and playing a game instead of participating in combat. This humanization of the two legendary figures helps bridge the gap not only between the average person and the hero but also, by extension, between the average person and gods - one of the religious functions of heroes in Greek mythology.

The Athenian leader Solon tried to link Ajax with the Aeacus family in order to both appropriate Ajax for themselves and to justify the Athenian claim to the island of Salamis. A statue to Ajax was erected in the agora and thereby was the religious veneration of Ajax turned into a means towards political ends.

Key to the hero cults was their explicit territoriality. Even more than the later worship of the Olympian gods, the veneration of ancestral heros was tied to a specific site around a specific city, usually a tomb, where the presence of the dead person could be felt and consulted.

Such tombs were both symbols and talismans: symbols of the pedigree of the community, telling people where they came from (and, hence, what was expected of them in the future) as well as talismans against threats, assaults, and potential disasters. Just as the hero fought for the community in the past, he or she was expected to continue their exertions in the future.

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