Ajax the Lesser (Ancient Greek: Αἴας), also called Locrian Ajax or Ajax son of Oileus, was king Oileus of Locris's son and leader of the Locrian contingent at Troy. Homer's Iliad ranks him among the foremost Achaeans — next to Achilles the swiftest of the Greeks — while later epic and tragedy remember him chiefly for dragging Cassandra from Athena's temple at the sack of Troy and for the divine wreck that killed him on the voyage home.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Ajax the Lesser" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Description and family
Ajax was son of Oileus, king of Locris; his mother is named Eriopis, though later tradition sometimes makes him son of Oileus and the nymph Rhene. Strabo places his birth at Naryx in Locris, and Ovid calls him the Narycian hero. He is distinguished as "Ajax the Less," "the lesser," or "Locrian Ajax" from Telamonian Ajax the Great.
Dares the Phrygian describes him as stocky, powerfully built, swarthy, pleasant, and brave. The Byzantine chronicler Malalas portrays him as tall and strong, with tawny complexion, curly black hair, a thick beard, and a long face — daring, magnanimous, and a womanizer.
II.At Troy
In the Iliad he leads the Locrians in forty ships against Troy (Hyginus gives twenty). He wears a linen cuirass (linothorax), is brave and intrepid, especially skilled with the spear, and — next to Achilles — the swiftest of all the Greeks. At the funeral games of Patroclus he contends with Odysseus and Antilochus in the footrace; Athena, hostile to him and favouring Odysseus, makes him stumble, so that he takes only second prize. Later catalogues also list him among the suitors of Helen.
III.Cassandra and Athena's wrath
After the fall of Troy he rushes into Athena's temple, where Cassandra has taken refuge clinging to the Palladium. Ajax violently drags her away among the captives; some writers say he raped her inside the sanctuary. Odysseus calls for his death by stoning, but Ajax saves himself by swearing innocence at Athena's statue.
According to the Bibliotheca, Calchas warns that Athena is furious and will destroy the Greek ships unless Ajax is killed at once. He hides at an altar; the Greeks, fearing to pollute the sanctuary, spare him. When they sail without punishing him, Athena persuades Zeus to raise a storm that wrecks many of their ships.
IV.Death
On the homeward voyage Athena strikes Ajax's ship with a thunderbolt and wrecks it on the Whirling Rocks (Gyrae). He clings to a rock with Poseidon's aid and would have been saved despite Athena, but he then boasts that he will escape the sea in defiance of the gods. Offended, Poseidon splits the rock with his trident and the sea swallows him; Thetis buries the corpse when it washes up on Mykonos.
Other versions wreck him on the Capharean Rocks of Euboea: a whirlwind lifts him, Athena impales his chest with fire, and his body is cast on sharp rocks afterward called the rocks of Ajax. After death his spirit is said to dwell on the island of Leuce. Philostratus, Euripides, and the scholiast on Lycophron offer further variants.
V.Cult and art
The Opuntian Locrians worshipped Ajax as their national hero. So great was their faith that when they drew up for battle they always left one place open for him, believing that — though invisible — he fought among them. A helmeted warrior with shield and sword on some Locrian coins is probably this Ajax.
The abduction of Cassandra was a favourite subject in Greek art — on the chest of Cypselus described by Pausanias and in many surviving works — and later painters such as Solomon Joseph Solomon returned to the scene.