Ajax
Sign in to saveAlso known as Aias, The Death of Ajax, Soph. Aj.
ancient Greek tragedy by Sophocles
Key facts
- Written by
- Sophocles
- Chorus
- Sailors from Salamis
- Characters
- Athena , Odysseus , Ajax , Tecmessa , Messenger, Teucer , Menelaus , Agamemnon
- Mute
- Attendants, Servants, Soldiers, Eurysaces
- Place premiered
- Athens
- Original language
- Ancient Greek
- Genre
- Tragedy
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Author
- Sophocles
- Genre
- Greek tragedy
- Narrative location
- Troy
- Image
- Death of Ajax.jpg
Show 9 more facts
- title
- Αἴας
- characters
- Eurysaces
- language of work or name
- Ancient Greek
- date of first performance
- 0442-00-00
- inception
- 0467-00-00
- location of first performance
- Theatre of Dionysus
- form of creative work
- play
- entry in abbreviations table
- Soph. Aj.
- Commons category
- Ajax (Sophocles)
via Wikidata · CC0
~16 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Sophocles' Ajax, or Aias (/ˈeɪdʒæks/ or /ˈaɪ.əs/; Ancient Greek: Αἴας [a͜í.aːs], gen. Αἴαντος), is a Greek tragedy written in the 5th century BCE. Ajax may be the earliest of Sophocles' seven tragedies to have survived, though it is probable that he had been composing plays for a quarter of a century already when it was first staged. It appears to belong to the same period as his Antigone, which was probably performed in 442 or 441 BCE, when he was 55 years old. The play depicts the fate of the warrior Ajax the Great, the second greatest hero at Troy (after Achilles), after the events of the Iliad but before the end of the Trojan War.
Plot
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Ajax” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.