Homer`s Ajax Essay, Research Paper

The relevance that the themes of tragedy could have to issues affecting the

city-state even in plays whose plots had ostensibly nothing to do with life in a

polis shows up clearly in Sophocles’ play entitled Ajax, presented in the early

440s B.C. The play bore the name of the second-best warrior (Achilles had been

preeminent) in the Greek army that besieged Troy in the Trojan War. When his

fellow Greek soldiers voted to award the armor of the dead Achilles to the wily

Odysseus instead of himself, Ajax went on a berserk rampage against his former

friends which the goddess Athena thwarted because Ajax had once rejected her

help in battle. Disgraced by his failure to secure revenge Ajax committed

suicide. Odysseus then stepped in to convince the Greek chiefs to bury Ajax

despite his attempted treachery because the future security of the army and the

obligations of friendship demanded that they obey the divine injunction always

to bury the dead. Odysseus’ arguments in favor of burying Ajax anachronistically

treat the army as if it were a polis, and his use of persuasive speech to

achieve accommodation of conflicting individual interests to the benefit of the

community corresponds to the way in which disputes in the polis were supposed to

be resolved.