Telamonian Ajax, the Story of Mycenaean Greece<\/p>\n
Ajax the Greater is one of two heroes to bear that name in the Odyssey.\u00a0 He shared his name with a second Ajax, Oilean Ajax, or Ajax the Lesser.\u00a0 He was born to Telamon, king of Salamis and Eriboea (or possibly Periboea), who was a grandson of Zeus, making Ajax the great-grandson of Zeus.\u00a0 His father was a great hero who had sailed with Jason as one of his Argonauts, a man that Ajax always looked up to and wished to emulate.\u00a0 He was cousin to the greatest of the Greek heroes, Achilles, and often described as second only to him as a warrior.<\/p>\n
Not much is known of Ajax\u2019s early life, beyond the fact that he grew up and was raised by his father on the island of Salamis, in the Saronic Gulf off the coast of Attica, along with his half-brother and trusted friend, Teucer.\u00a0 Sometime during his early life, he was among the suitors of Helen, leading to his later involvement in the Trojan War, though he may have joined regardless in his search for glory.\u00a0 Following Homer\u2019s stories of Ajax in the Iliad, later writers added to his story, telling of him having a similar invulnerability to Achilles thanks to Heracles.\u00a0 There are two version of this tale; either by Heracles offering a prayer to Zeus (as told by Apollodorus and Pindar) which led to Ajax being named Aias (after an eagle that appeared as a favorable omen), or by Heracles wrapping young Ajax in his lion\u2019s skin (according to Lycophron).\u00a0 With or without this invulnerability, Ajax was a fearsome fighter who had already made a reputation for himself before setting off to fulfil his destiny in Troy.<\/p>\n
His reputation was upheld in under the oppressive walls of Ilion, where he and his twelve ships set up camp on the exposed flank of the Greek forces.\u00a0 From here he led raids against Chersonesus, controlled by Thrace, taking prisoner a Trojan prince, Polydorus, along with much wealth.\u00a0 He also raided Phrygia, where he killed King Teuthras (Teleutas) and took home the King\u2019s daughter, Tecmessa, who would bear him two sons among other spoils.<\/p>\n
All in all, it appears that Ajax led an exemplary life, at least by Mycenaean standards, so why was his life fated to end in tragedy?\u00a0 Ajax, son of Telamon, is a hero, perhaps with historical basis, but surely with a mostly literary reason for existence.\u00a0 He is Mycenaean Greece, his victories are Greece\u2019s victories, and his eventual destruction is a parallel to Greece\u2019s descent into its Dark Ages.\u00a0 While everything seemed to be going great and according to plan, in reality Ajax, and Greece, were destined for tragedy.<\/p>\n
All appeared well for Ajax, in the absence of Achilles he had strongly established himself as the greatest of the Greek warriors.\u00a0 His fighting prowess was widely respected and celebrated in the ranks of the Greek army, yet he as a man was not.\u00a0 Here were the seeds of his destruction, while the Greeks respected Ajax the fighter, there was no respect for Ajax the man; he was seen more as a bull than a lion, a weapon to be wielded by others and pointed at the enemy, not truly a friend and ally capable of making tactical decisions.\u00a0 This may perhaps have some relation to the fall of Mycenaean Greece around the year 1100 BCE.\u00a0 The Trojan War as it historically may have happened likely occurred sometime slightly before the fall of Mycenaean civilization, this was the pinnacle of pre-classical Greece.\u00a0 Yet soon after the victory, society collapse.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Maybe just as Ajax, while the fighter was respected, the person was not; meaning, individuals within the city states may have stabbed each other in the back and betrayed each other, since there was no respect for the humanity, but only for the fighter.\u00a0 A stretch? Perhaps.\u00a0 But the deeper one looks into the story of Telamonian Ajax, the more a relationship may appear.<\/p>\n
This lack of respect of the man, almost to a derisive extent, was what led to Ajax\u2019s eventual death.\u00a0 Ajax was no dumb brute, he knew that the other Greek captains did not truly respect him as an individual beyond his fighting prowess; he wanted to be viewed as his father was, as his ancestors were, not just a tool of death, but a man, a hero.\u00a0 In the waning days of Mycenaean Greece it is possible that raids against both friends and foe became more and more prevalent in an attempt to both reduce aggression and dissatisfaction in the home state and win glory as the Greeks\u2019 ancestors had done in better days.<\/p>\n
In order to gain the respect of his peers, Ajax took greater and greater risks in the fighting, perhaps risks similar to that the Greeks took in their attack against Troy.\u00a0 While other Greeks cowered, fearing the fate that might befall them at the hands of Hector, Ajax seemed to almost revel in the opportunity to test himself against the famed Trojan prince.\u00a0 When the Trojan army struggled, and Hector challenged the Greeks to send their bravest to fight him in single combat, Ajax was one of the fighters to volunteer, and was the fighter that was chosen.\u00a0 It is described that Hector, the Trojan champion, was intimidated by Ajax again demonstrating Ajax\u2019s physical superiority.\u00a0 In fact, during the ensuing fight, Ajax gained the upper hand and nearly killed Hector with a spear throw after deflecting Hector\u2019s throw.\u00a0 Using a massive stone that normal men would struggle with, Ajax drove Hector to his knees and appeared on the verge of destroying the Trojan prince when sunset put an end to their hostilities.\u00a0 Hector was so impressed by Ajax\u2019s prowess that he exchanged a sword for Ajax\u2019s girdle.\u00a0 Here is perhaps another allusion to Greece\u2019s downfall into the dark ages.\u00a0 Ajax gave up his own defensive bit of clothing, for a weapon of war, though he had plenty himself.\u00a0 A girdle that might have protected him from the very sword he later fell upon.\u00a0 The Greek city states may have become too war like in their pursuit of glory, abandoning their own city defenses in a quest to raid ever further and in greater amounts, leaving their wives and children (or in this allegorical case, Ajax\u2019s body) defenseless to the very weapons of war that they themselves used.\u00a0 Ajax went on to face Hector several more times throughout the Iliad, though he never came quite as close to killing him again.<\/p>\n
This is Ajax the fighter, the Ajax that the Greeks respected, but what of Ajax the man?\u00a0 Unlike the dim view that his fellow Greeks have of him, Ajax is not as simple a man as he first appears.\u00a0 Following continued fighting and losses on both sides, Ajax is one of the men sent to attempt to convince Achilles to rejoin the war.\u00a0 Though Phoenix appeals to Achilles using loyalty, and Odysseus uses all of his great wiles in an attempt to draw Achilles back into the fighting, it is Ajax whose blunt words lacking in cunning that most nearly convince Achilles to rejoin the fighting (9.766-779).\u00a0 In his very simplicity, his very lack of guile is the worth of Ajax; with him what he says is what he means.\u00a0 He represents a ideal hero, a man peerless on the battle field, and trustworthy to a fault.\u00a0 Ajax the man was steadfast to his allies and immovable to his enemies, with great determination, as seen in his defense of the Greek ships from the assault of Hector though he stood alone.\u00a0 He stood fast until the very gods themselves had to intervene in order for Hector to reach his prize.\u00a0 The Greek city states prior to their collapse may have been similar.\u00a0 Unwavering in their behavior, thinking in terms of honor and not realizing the realpolitik required to be successful in power long-term.\u00a0 There is some evidence that the collapse of Mycenaean Greece may have been preceded by ecological disaster, something that to the Greeks in the years following may have been seen as an act of the gods, much as Ajax\u2019s spear breaking was an act of Apollo.<\/p>\n
Still with all these subtleties that may or may not foretell his death and the collapse of Mycenaean civilization, with the breaking of his spear by the gods, the story of Ajax takes a turn towards darkness.\u00a0 Before, he was unstoppable, second only to Achilles among the Greeks, but after this point it was all down hill for Ajax and for Mycenaean Greece.\u00a0 During the funeral games for the slain Patroclus, Homer\u2019s Iliad (23.753-760) tells of Ajax, who had previously never been bested was tied in the wrestling arena by wily Odysseus, who uses cunning to defeat the towering hero.\u00a0 He also fights and loses to Diomedes in the arena, thanks to the other Greeks worrying that Diomedes\u2019s reckless spear thrusts would kill Ajax.\u00a0 Twice in quick succession, this man, second among the Greeks, is humiliated and defeated.\u00a0 How, did this occur?\u00a0 Very simply, Odysseus defeated Ajax by avoiding military confrontation, instead using trickery and subterfuge to defeat him in the arena.\u00a0 Diomedes used Ajax\u2019s honor, the fact that he did not wish to kill his competitor against him with his recklessness.\u00a0 The fall of Mycenaean civilization shows evidence of infighting among the city states, perhaps it was felt that while the leadership of the states focused on martial prowess and face to face combat, their enemies used trickery and the states\u2019 own honor code against them in order to overthrow them.\u00a0 At every point so far the only issue for Ajax was his honor and lack of guile.\u00a0 He did not use subterfuge and thus did not expect it to be used against him.\u00a0 Perhaps this mirrors the Mycenaean leadership.<\/p>\n
His lack of trickery in dealing with the opposition could perhaps be attributed to Ajax\u2019s lack of intelligence, but this does not appear to be the case. \u00a0There is much artwork, most famously black figure amphoras by Exekias, depicting Ajax and Achilles playing some kind of board game or dice game.\u00a0 As Mariscal (2011) states, this shows that Ajax was not without some intelligence.\u00a0 It takes cunning to play board games and a simple brute would not gain enjoyment from such a past time.\u00a0 This shows that it was likely not that Ajax was incapable of subtlety and intrigue, but instead chose not to use these methods as he viewed them as detracting from his honor.\u00a0 The descendants of Mycenaean Greece viewed their forebearers as heroes and legends, capable of everything, so their destruction could not have been due to inability but due to honor instead.<\/p>\n
Ajax\u2019s descent from the pinnacle of the Greek army to his untimely demise reached its crescendo following the death of Achilles.\u00a0 The Greeks held a competition to see who would receive the armor of Achilles, greatest of the Greek warriors, cousin of Ajax, as a reward.\u00a0 Again, it came down to a competition between Ajax and wily Odysseus to see who would receive the wonderous armor, and again Odysseus prevailed.\u00a0 Stories vary on how the decision was made to give Odysseus the armor and not Ajax, with some having a Greek leadership decide and others saying that Trojan prisoners were used; either way, the result was clear, Odysseus received the armor, and Ajax received nothing.\u00a0\u00a0 When Ajax made his claim on the armor, he based it on facts; on his close blood relationship to Achilles, on his closer relationship to Zeus, and on his combat prowess.\u00a0 Odysseus on the other hand spun words and complicated his argument using word play to outmaneuver Ajax and win the minds of the judges.\u00a0 Again, we see the same pattern in the undoing of Ajax; his inability or unwillingness to play dirty, to use trickery, led to less scrupulous individuals defeating him.\u00a0 This likely mirrors the view of later Greeks of what caused the downfall of Mycenaean civilization.\u00a0 Like most civilizations the Greek one that followed the collapse of Mycenaean civilization lionized their ancestors, and yet they faced the issue that their ancestors had failed, that the society had collapsed.\u00a0 Thus, they found the perfect tool in making them overly honorable to the point where they were taken advantage of by less savory members of society and by their enemies both within and without, much like our tragic hero Ajax.<\/p>\n
Just like many of his fellow heroes fell beneath the walls of Troy, Ajax was destined to never see his home again.\u00a0 Here his story once again becomes cloudy.\u00a0 Homer simply states that Ajax died and leaves the method and cause murky.\u00a0 Sophocles however tells a story of madness.\u00a0 In Sophocles\u2019s tale, Ajax is driven mad by the slight of not receiving the armor of Achilles and attempts to murder the Greek leadership, but is tricked by Athena and instead kills farm animals.\u00a0 Yet this is not the Ajax that is previously seen, and the great writers of tragedies were known to change characters to better fit the story they wish to tell, or could there be another explanation?\u00a0 It could be, as Simpson (1969) claims, that modern language has changed the understanding of what Ajax truly underwent.\u00a0 He claims that when Athena states that she clouded Ajax\u2019s vision, this did not simply mean sight, but also the mind.\u00a0 This would mean that Athena drove Ajax crazy and drove him to possibly plan the attack against the Greek leadership.\u00a0 This would perfectly fit with the idea of Ajax being a proxy for Mycenaean Greece.\u00a0 It plays into the story of the gods being the undoing of the Mycenaeans, with Athena ultimately causing the downfall of Ajax by driving him mad with anger.\u00a0 Just as Apollo had previously broken his spear, this was a blow through very little fault of his own, beyond perhaps hubris.\u00a0 There are stories that Ajax refused to pray for the gods\u2019 protection prior to leaving for the Trojan War and that was the reason they treated him so harshly.\u00a0 Perhaps their descendants viewed the Mycenaeans\u2019 warlike ways as acts of hubris that, though the men were just and honorable, led to the gods striking them down with ecological disasters (Drake 2012) and infighting.<\/p>\n
However, the collapse of Mycenaean society does not appear to have been instant, but more of a drawn-out process (Livni 2019) and it is here that Ajax\u2019s most famous words come into play.\u00a0 Prior to his suicide at the midpoint of Sophocles\u2019s Ajax, the titular hero gives a speech that has been often discussed.\u00a0 In the play Ajax (lines 646-693), Ajax appears to intend to repent for his madness and acquiesce to those he disagreed with, yet soon after he takes his own life.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 It appears that he truly did set out to rethink his place in the world after his speech, it is unlikely that a man that has previously been so straightforward would suddenly grow deceptive, and finds that he does not fit the world anymore.\u00a0 Thus, he chooses to remove himself from the world, rather than taint it with his presence.\u00a0 In this way, later Greeks could explain the collapse of Mycenaean civilization, it was a combination of factors, none of which were wholly the fault of the Greeks that eventually led to Mycenaean society no longer being tenable, and thus disappearing.\u00a0 The palace society could no longer support itself due to political and ecological issues, and thus faded from existence.\u00a0 This story would allow the descendants to keep a glorious view of their ancestors that oversaw this slow collapse.<\/p>\n
The story of Ajax is one of tragedy, of a hero that through almost no fault of his own, is destroyed by his enemies and the gods.\u00a0 He wishes only to prove himself and live up to the standards of his forebearers and due to his notion of honor, is exploited by those who he should be able to trust.\u00a0 The very gods turn against him and work towards his annihilation.\u00a0 This is mirrored in the possible narrative that the Greeks may have told of the collapse of Mycenaean civilization.\u00a0 A civilization almost too pure for this world that was taken advantage of by forces both on the inside and the outside.\u00a0 That may have angered the gods unwittingly, but was blameless beyond that fact.\u00a0 A true tragedy, Ajax and Mycenaean civilization, hand in hand, whether purposefully or not, the two fit together like pieces of a puzzle.<\/p>\n
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Sources<\/p>\n
Drake, Brandon L. \u201cThe Influence of Climatic Change on the Late Bronze Age Collapse and the Greek Dark Ages.\u201d\u00a0Journal of Archaeological Science<\/em>, vol. 39, no. 6, 2012, pp. 1862\u20131870., doi:10.1016\/j.jas.2012.01.029.<\/p>\n Exekias, \u201cBlack-figure amphora with Achilles and Ajax playing dice,\u201d c. 550-525 BCE. Museo gregoriano etrusco (Vatican City). Ceramic, 61.1 cm tall.<\/p>\n Homer.\u00a0The Iliad<\/em>. Trans. Stanley Lombardo. Indianapollis\/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997.<\/p>\n Livni, Joseph. \u201cInvestigation of Collapse of Complex Socio-Political Systems Using Classical Stability Theory.\u201d\u00a0Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and Its Applications<\/em>, vol. 524, 2019, pp. 553\u2013562., doi:10.1016\/j.physa.2019.04.167.<\/p>\n Mariscal, Lucia Romero. \u201cAjax and Achilles Playing a Board Game: Revisited from the Literary Tradition.\u201d\u00a0The Classical Quarterly<\/em>, vol. 61, no. 2, 2011, pp. 394-401.<\/p>\n Simpson, Michael. \u201cSOPHOCLES\u2019 AJAX: HIS MADNESS AND TRANSFORMATION.\u201d Arethusa<\/em>, vol. 2, no. 1, 1969, pp. 88\u2013103.<\/p>\n Sophocles.\u00a0Ajax<\/em>. Trans. Shomit Duta. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Telamonian Ajax, the Story of Mycenaean Greece Ajax the Greater is one of two heroes to bear that name in the Odyssey.\u00a0 He shared his name with a second Ajax, Oilean Ajax, or Ajax the Lesser.\u00a0 He was born to Telamon, king of Salamis and Eriboea (or possibly Periboea), who was a grandson of Zeus,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8804,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/greaterajax\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/greaterajax\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/greaterajax\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/greaterajax\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8804"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/greaterajax\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/greaterajax\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/greaterajax\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23\/revisions\/79"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/greaterajax\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/greaterajax\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}