Note 726 — Chapter XV · LEGEND OF TROY.

Argument of Æthiopis and Ilias Minor, and Fragm. 2 of the latter, pp. 17, 18, Düntz.; Quint. Smyrn. v. 120-482; Hom. Odyss. xi. 550; Pindar, Nem. vii. 26. The Ajax of Sophoklês, and the contending speeches between Ajax and Ulysses in the beginning of the thirteenth book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, are too well known to need special reference.

The suicide of Ajax seems to have been described in detail in the Æthiopis: compare Pindar. Isthm. iii. 51, and the Scholia ad loc., which show the attention paid by Pindar to the minute circumstances of the old epic. See Fragm. 2 of the Ἰλίου Πέρσις of Arktinus, in Düntz. p. 22, which would seem more properly to belong to the Æthiopis. Diktys relates the suicide of Ajax, as a consequence of his unsuccessful competition with Odysseus, not about the arms of Achilles, but about the Palladium, after the taking of the city (v. 14).

There were, however, many different accounts of the manner in which Ajax had died, some of which are enumerated in the argument to the drama of Sophoklês. Ajax is never wounded in the Iliad: Æschylus made him invulnerable except under the armpits (see Schol. ad Sophok. Ajac. 833); the Trojans pelted him with mud—εἴ πως βαρηθείῃ ὑπὸ τοῦ πήλου (Schol. Iliad. xiv. 404).