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Son of Oileus, suitor of Helen, leader of the Locrians against Troy, buried by Thetis in Myconos.
And Athena threw a thunderbolt at the ship of Ajax; and when the ship went to pieces he made his way safe to a rock, and declared that he was saved in spite of the intention of Athena. But Poseidon smote the rock with his trident and split it, and Ajax fell into the sea and perished; and his body, being washed up, was buried by Thetis in Myconos.(Apollod. E.6.6)
In his great picture of the underworld, which Polygnotus painted at Delphi,
the artist depicted Ajax as a castaway, the brine forming a scurf on his skin
(Paus. 10.31.1 ). According to the Scholiast on Hom. Il. xiii.66 Ajax was cast
up on the shore of Delos, where Thetis found and buried him. But as it was unlawful
to be buried or even to die in Delos (Thuc. 3.104 ), the statement of Apollodorus
that Ajax was buried in Myconus, a small island to the east of Delos, is more
probable. It is said that on hearing of his death the Locrians mourned for him
and wore black for a year, and every year they laded a vessel with splendid offerings,
hoisted a black sail on it, and, setting the ship on fire, let it drift out to
sea, there to burn down to the water's edge as a sacrifice to the drowned hero.
Sophocles wrote a tragedy, The Locrian Ajax, on the crime and punishment of the
hero. (Commentary)
This extract is from: Apollodorus, Library and Epitome (ed. Sir James George Frazer, 1921). Cited Mar 2003 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks.
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