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Sophocles' Ajax, or Aias (/ ˈ eɪ dʒ æ k s / or / ˈ aɪ. ə s /; Ancient Greek: Αἴας, gen. Αἴαντος), is a Greek tragedy written in the 5th century BCE. Ajax may be the earliest of Sophocles' seven tragedies to have survived, though it is probable that he had been composing plays for a quarter of a century already when it was first staged.
In Sophocles' play Ajax, a famous retelling of Ajax's demise, after the armor is awarded to Odysseus, Ajax feels so insulted that he wants to kill Agamemnon and Menelaus. Athena intervenes and clouds his mind and vision, and he goes to a flock of sheep and slaughters them, imagining they are the Achaean leaders, including Odysseus and Agamemnon.
Sophocles wrote more than 120 plays, [3] but only seven have survived in a complete form: Ajax, Antigone, Women of Trachis, Oedipus Rex, Electra, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus. [4] For almost fifty years, Sophocles was the most celebrated playwright in the dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens , which took place during the ...
Tecmessa's largest role is in Ajax, a mid-fifth century BC play by the Athenian playwright Sophocles. [4] After the goddess Athena drove the revenge-seeking Ajax mad, he left his tent with the aim to kill Odysseus and the two Atreides while Tecmessa advised him to stay inside; nevertheless he ignored her.
From this, Hoey and others have argued that Sophocles' interpretation was more likely to have influenced Bacchylides than vice versa. [2] Serving as further evidence is the relationship between the character of Deianeira and that of Clytemnestra in Aeschylus ' Oresteia , first produced in 458. [ 2 ]
The theme of forbidding dead bodies from burial occurs many times throughout ancient Greek literature. Examples include the body of Hector as portrayed in the Iliad, the body of Ajax as portrayed in Sophocles' Ajax, and the children of Niobe. For what happens to the body of Polynices, see Sophocles' Antigone.
Odysseus figures centrally or indirectly in a number of the extant plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles (Ajax, Philoctetes) and Euripides (Hecuba, Rhesus, Cyclops) and figured in still more that have not survived. In his Ajax, Sophocles portrays Odysseus as a modern voice of reasoning compared to the title character's rigid antiquity.
Eurysaces (Ancient Greek: Εὐρυσάκης) in Greek mythology was the son of the Ajax and the enslaved former Teuthranian princess Tecmessa. He was venerated in Athens. Eurysaces was named after his father's famous shield. In Sophocles' tragedy Ajax, the protagonist hands the shield to his young son before committing suicide.