Ajax (Greek: Αἴας), a Greek hero, son of Oïleus the king of Locris, called the "lesser" or Locrian Ajax, to distinguish him from Ajax, son of Telamon. He was the leader of the Locrian contingent during the Trojan War. He is a significant figure in the Iliad and is mentioned in the Odyssey. In Greek mythology, Oileus, or Oïleus was the King of Locris. ... Locris was a region of ancient Greece, made up of two districts. ... Aias (Greek: Αίας: Of the Earth), or Ajax, son of Telamon, king of Salamis, a legendary hero of ancient Greece. ... In Greek mythology, Telamon, son of Aeacus, King of Aegina, and Endeis and brother of Peleus, accompanied Jason as one his Argonauts, and was present at the hunt for the Calydonian Boar. ... The Trojan War was a war waged, according to legend, against the city of Troy in Asia Minor by the armies of the Achaeans, following the kidnapping (or elopement) of Helen of Sparta by Paris of Troy. ... The Iliad (Greek Ιλιάς, Ilias) tells part of the story of the siege of the city of Ilium, i. ... Odysseus and Nausicaä - by Charles Gleyre The Odyssey (Greek Οδύσσεια) is the second of the two great Greek epic poems ascribed to Homer, the first of which is the Iliad. ...

Homer gives a favorable description of him as a warrior. In spite of his small stature, he held his own amongst the other heroes before Troy; he was brave, next to Achilles in swiftness of foot and famous for throwing the spear. But he was boastful, arrogant and quarrelsome; like the Telamonian Ajax, he was the enemy of Odysseus, and in the end the victim of the vengeance of Poseidon, who wrecked his ship on his homeward voyage (Odyssey, iv. 499). Bust of Homer in the British Museum For other uses, see Homer (disambiguation). ... The wrath of Achilles, by Léon Benouville In Greek mythology, , transliterated to Akhilleus or Achilleus in Roman letters, Latinized from this ancient Greek to Achilles, appearing in Etruscan as Achle, was a hero (ancient Greek heros, defender) of the Trojan War, the greatest and the most central character of... Odysseus and the Sirens. ... In Greek mythology, Poseidon (Ποσειδῶν) was the god of the sea. ... Odysseus and Nausicaä - by Charles Gleyre The Odyssey (Greek Οδύσσεια) is the second of the two great Greek epic poems ascribed to Homer, the first of which is the Iliad. ...

A later story gives a more definite account of the offense of which he was guilty. It is said that, after the fall of Troy, he dragged Cassandra away by force from the statue of the goddess at which she had taken refuge as a suppliant, and raped her (Lycophron, 360, Quintus Smyrnaeus xiii. 422). For this, his ship was wrecked in a storm on the coast of Euboea, and he himself was struck by lightning and impaled upon a rock. (Virgil, Aeneid I. 40-45). Painting by Evelyn De Morgan In Greek mythology, Cassandra (she who entangles men) (also known as Alexandra) was a daughter of King Priam of Troy and his queen Hecuba, who captured the eye of Apollo and was granted the ability to see the future. ... Lycophron was a Greek poet and grammarian. ... Quintus Smyrnaeus, Greek epic poet, probably flourished in the latter part of the 4th century AD. He is sometimes called Quintus Calaber, because the only manuscript of his poem was discovered at Otranto in Calabria by Cardinal Bessarion in 1450. ... Euboea or Negropont (Modern Greek: Εύβοια Evia, Ancient Greek Εúβοια Eúboia; see also List of traditional Greek place names), is the largest island of the Greek archipelago. ... A sculpture of Virgil, probably from the 1st century AD. Publius Vergilius Maro (October 15, 70 BC–19 BC), known in English as Virgil or Vergil, is a Latin poet, the author of the Eclogues, the Georgics and the Aeneid, the last being an epic poem of twelve books that... The Aeneid is a Latin epic written by Virgil in the 1st century BCE (between 29 and 19 BCE) that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy where he became the ancestor of the Romans. ...

He was said to have lived after his death in the island of Leuke. He was worshipped as a national hero by the Opuntian Locrians (on whose coins he appears), who always left a vacant place for him in the ranks of their army when drawn up in battle array. He was the subject of a lost tragedy by Sophocles. The rape of Cassandra by Ajax was frequently represented in Greek works of art, for instance on the chest of Cypselus described by Pausanias (v. 17) and in extant works. Map of the Snake Island Snake Island (Romanian: Insula şerpilor, Ukrainian: ostriv Zmiyinyy) is an isle in the Black Sea, currently claimed by Romania, but administered by Ukraine and included in its Kiliya raion of Odeska oblast. Geography The island is a limestone formation located 44 km from the... A Roman bust of Sophocles. ... Cypselus (or Kypselos) was the first tyrant of Corinth, Greece in the 7th century BC. With increased wealth and more complicated trade relations and social structures, Greek city-states tended to overthrow their traditional hereditary priest-kings; Corinth, the richest archaic polis, led the way. ... Pausanias was Greek traveller and geographer of the 2nd century A.D., who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. ...

References

• This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, a publication in the public domain.

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Ajax the Lesser