Note 37:2 — INTRODUCTION.[vii:1]

The tradition was that Ajax was guilty of an outrage on Cassandra, the priestess of Athene. He on his return voyage was destroyed by shipwreck, and the Locrians were supposed to have suffered on account of his crime visitations of pestilence and other dire calamities. When they consulted the oracle, the reply was, that the guilt of Ajax could be expiated only by their sending annually to Troy, for a thousand years, two virgins to perform menial service in the temple of Athene. The hero, the crime, and the expiation are, more probably than not, all mythical.