Introduction

This chapter focuses on Ajax, as one of the major characters in Homer's Iliadand the only hero in the story that never received direct help from a god. It looks into the Odyssey, which provides the earliest reference of Sophocles being concerned with Ajax. It also mentions a poignant scene in the Odyssey wherein Ajax refuses Odysseus' attempt for reconciliation in the underworld after the incident of Achilles's armor being rewarded to Oddyseus instead of Ajax. This chapter talks about how fragments of the Odyssey and summaries of the late writer Proclus was treated or referred to in several poems of the post-Homeric Epic Cycle. It discusses how the story of the Odyssey provided a popular subject for artists from the seventh century onwards.