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Yet I feel his wretchedness. My enemy, yes, but caught up in a terrible doom. My doom, too. I see that now. All we who live, live as ghosts of ourselves. Shadows in passing. Thus speaks Odysseus, with regard to Aias who has – in a blind and savage spell of madness, inspired by Athena – slaughtered his fellow Greek's spoils of war (cattle, sheep, etc.), while thinking that he was actually taking revenge on Menelaus and Agamemnon after they had corruptly awarded the fallen Achilles' armor to
Ajax’s story left an impression after the first time I heard about it. It was sometime after my early attempts of trying to read Homer’s The Iliad. Ajax is one of the heroes fighting on the Greek side, today like many other heroes in this story, he is pretty much forgotten as the focus is on Achilles and Hector. However, as I continued to read different translations of The Iliad his story stayed with me. For me, this was just another thing that convinced me this epic poem is anti-war.(view spoil...
Ajax: RARRRR!!! *kills lots of sheep*Ajax: ... Ajax: *feels much shame* i should kill myselfTecmessa: don't do it hoe Teucer: don't do it bro Ajax: *kills self anyway*Tecmessa & Teucer: well great. now our lives are f'd. Menelaus: trololol hope the birds eat ur face Odysseus: guys maybe we shouldn't be jerks... Agamemnon: fine whatevs Ajax: *gets buried*
Being my first encounter with Greek tragedy I wondered how Sophocles would approach the life of Ájax, whom readers know from the Iliad and Greek mythology in general. Well, he does so by centering in the lonesome end of the great Greek hero and the aftermaths of madness. Sophocles reduces the scope of the legend to focus on the darkness of being faced with one's own fate. Ájax is lost in the madness of his fury: whether he kills his comrades in arms or the cattle is unimportant for modern reader...
But now I see, and the sight destroys me! this was fascinating to read & really take apart in class, especially having just finished the iliad, but i also just... didn't feel that invested in any of it. it's an excellently crafted play! the motifs! the characterization! objectively it's very good; i just do not care about ajax, like, as a person despite feeling kind of sad about him herealso, i have an admirable amount of self-control for not taking this down another star after circumstances
Achilles has now passed from this mortal coil because the silly sod never thought to put armour on his sandals. The giant Ajax, believing himself to be the most powerful of the Greeks, is deeply offended when Odysseus is given the dead man's armour and, blinded with rage, decides to take bloody vengeance against those who have slightest him. Thanks to divine intervention he only kills a flock of sheep, believing them to be his comrades, but now Ajax is unable to live with the shame of his attemp...
SpoilersThis play by Sophocles is about the circumstances surrounding Ajax's death towards the end of the Trojan war. It has a strange structure to a modern reader. We take up the action in a conversation between Odysseus and Athena, after Odysseus is trailing the man who has killed all the Greek cattle and sheep. Athena reveals that this is Ajax, who in rage over Odysseus being awarded Achilles armor has set out to slaughter all the Greeks. However, Athena made him mad and he delusionally kille...
If you try to cure evil with evilyou will add more pain to your fate.I loved the Iliad so I always enjoy reading about the characters in that story. The only flaw I can point is that it felt too short, but that's not really a flaw. It just means it was good enough for me to want to read more.
“To mock foes, is that not the sweetest mockery?”Athena’s cruel words leave Odysseus hesitant in the opening scene of Ajax, one of Sophocles’ most intense and dramatic plays. The powerful Goddess has made the Greek hero Ajax lose his mind and fight herds of cattle instead of men in his delusion. To make his shame perfect, she wants Odysseus to see his disgrace. When Odysseus refuses, she mocks him, asking provocatively if he is afraid of a madman. And the clever Odysseus answers, without hesitat...
Sophocles wrote a few plays centered around war and Odysseus; this is probably one of the most famous out of them as well as the best-written of them all. Ajax focuses on the title character, who is a revered warrior whom many people may remember from Homer's Iliad. However, this particular story centers mainly around the downfall of the hero, whose warlike nature drives him to almost kill his friends; his guilt is what really gets him in the end. Ajax himself is not necessarily a bad man, but h...
Ajax, gone mad, attacks the Argiens herds at night, believing they attack the men themselves. Discovering the deception and its dishonour, he commits suicide by impaling himself with a sword planted on the ground.While Tecmesse, his wife, laments that Teucer intends to bury his brother with the honours he has. In the name of Agamemnon, Menelaus is opposed to this, who comes to tell him not to bury him. But Teucer is so keen on this burial that Agamemnon himself comes to say to him to keep a low
this series, The Greek Tragedy in New Translations, pairs scholars & poets for bangin' translations of plays by aeschylus, euripides, sophocles, etc & the editors' foreword itself got me pretty psyched; these guys seem to be really hardcore about their convictions regarding quality translations, & i'm totally going to check out some others.that said, in this translation pevear steps down from bein' all scholarly-like & lets herbert golder do that work, & omg does he ever; it's funny because i on...
It seems that there is seldom an appropriate time to repudiate the goddess Athena.
It is impossible to dislike such a masterpiece! The Ájax's tragedy is basically about the pride of a powerfull warrior who seeks victory without the Gods help... and infuriate them because of his behaviour. His disgrace is the disgrace of all his family and his men, as we can see in their lament, and his salvation (but only to himself)is his death. What I like the most in this book is about Ajax's sense of pride who refuses to bend in whatever situation, against whoever be, but mostly, the dialo...
Ye have been warned. Spoilers abound. (But if you know anything about tragedies you know where this is going)I love works that expand upon The Iliad. Whether it be characters or scenes, it's always fun to learn more about the Trojan War. Ajax is similar to Antigone because it involves the justice pertaining to the way a body is dealt with. It also involves oracles and prophecy like many of Sophocles's plays, but Ajax has unfortunately left his tent before he can hear it. The first part of the pl...
Psychosis and the Trojan War20 March 2012 On the 9th of March 2012 an American patrol was travelling through Afghanistan when their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb. Of the occupants two were severely injured (I believe they lost limbs). Two days later, on the 11th March 2012, one of the soldiers that had escaped injury took up an assault rifle, left the camp, and proceeded to slaughter 16 Afghani civilians from two villages. This event hit the media like a storm, and as of the writing of t...
First of all, Aias (the title in my edition) is Ajax - Big Ajax, the hero of the Trojan War. There, I saved you from "who the fuck even is this guy." Ajax plays a big role in The Iliad. At one point he defends the Achaean fleet from the Trojans single-handedly while Achilles is off sulking. But after the war Achilles's armor, which amounts to the Heisman Trophy of the war, is given to wily Odysseus after his speech about it proves more eloquent. Ajax is so pissed off that he goes on a murderous
I was really excited to read this story. I was expecting something more of an epic tale of war and destruction, but I got something a little different. I still relatively enjoyed it, just not as much as I was hoping I would.Ajax is the story of... well, take a wild guess, and follows the last moments of his life- involving Odysseus praying to Athena for him to go blind and insane, which he does and eventually kills himself. A lot of the imagery and dialogue conveyed through Ajax shows just how m...
This is an extremely easy to read and powerful version of a tragedy by Sophocles. The book includes a thoughtful introduction, notes, and glossary - the reader incidentally can pick up quite a bit of information about life in classical Greece from reading this book, which supplies many interesting insights onto life/attitudes in antiquity. The play itself compactly conveys the political and social circumstances of the mythic/Homeric suicide of the hero Aias (or, Ajax, as he's known in the Latini...
A beautiful tragedy by the great Ancient Greek master Sophocles that is centered around key values and themes, which are glory (kleos, as perceived then), social shame, anger, hatred, and stubbornness. Ajax the hero is full of hatred and aggressiveness because he was not awarded the god-made (Hephaestus) armor of the Geek hero Achilles, after his death. Although Ajax was subject to a trick by the goddess Athena (in response to an insult she had received from him previously, displayed in his prid...