Aias of the Telamonians

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Ajax kills a ram, he hallucinations for Odysseus holds
Aias, protected by Hermes and Athena, brings the dead Achilles back to the camp of the Greeks. Neck amphora of the Antimenes painter , around 520-510 BC Chr.

Aias der Telamonier ( ancient Greek Αἴας Aías , Latin Aiax , German Ajax ), also called Ajax the Great to distinguish it from the Locrian Aias , is one of the main Greek heroes of the Trojan War in Greek mythology .

myth

As the son of the Salaminian king Telamon and Periboia , he was called "the Telamonian". Aias was a powerful Greek fighter before Troy , only Achilles surpassed him. According to Homer's Iliad , Aias was huge, much taller than other men. The source emphasizes an unusual trait in him, namely that he and his prey slave Tekmessa shared a strong mutual love, from which a son, Eurysakes , also emerged. When Achilles withdrew from the fight, Aias was drawn to face Hector , the strongest Trojan, in a duel. The fight lasted all day, Hector was slightly injured, after which the heroes parted in high mutual respect.

After Achilles' later death, Aias protected Menelaus , Odysseus ' fellow combatant , so that Achilles' body could be recovered without further Greek losses. At the funeral service, it was customary for those who claim the most merit in rescuing a corpse to fight a speech duel over the remains of the fallen. Aias and Odysseus competed against each other to fight for Achilles' armor . Odysseus was more articulate, however, and the award was bestowed on him. Aias was silent, but had not got over the defeat. That same night he woke up from restless sleep in a fit of frenzy and killed Odysseus' flock of sheep, which he took to be the Greeks; He whipped the goat in which he saw Odysseus to death. When he remembered, he threw himself into his sword out of shame at his unworthy deed. His half-brother Teukros arranged for an honorable funeral.

In the eleventh song of the Odyssey , Aias is visited by Odysseus, but he is angry with his former friend. When the cunning Ithacian honors Aias and asks that the argument be forgotten, Aias turns away from him without a word and disappears into the darkness.

In Ovid's case , the soil soaked in Aias' blood creates the hyacinth , in whose calyx the letters AI can be read. This is on the one hand the reference to the name of Aias, on the other hand to the cry of Hyakinthos , which Ovid also transforms into a hyacinth and gives it the name.

According to Hugo Winckler and Hellmut Flashar, the story of Aias shows parallels to that of the Israelite King Saul. Both are tall and of physical superiority. The idealization as warrior and ruler, as well as the resulting independence from fate, anticipates hubris, the divine moderation of human endeavors. What they have in common is the motif of blindness, melancholy due to divine partiality (preference for Odysseus or David) and ultimately the honor-saving downfall: Ajax is judged, while Saul is defeated in a hopeless struggle. The concept of the hereafter is also similar: Ajax enters Hades and Saul enters Sheol .

reception

Ajax's suicide. Drawing of the vase picture on the so-called Eurytios crater . It is the oldest known depiction of this motif (around 600 BC).

Aias' frenzy and death are the subject of the tragedy Aias of Sophocles . In it Aias is beaten madly by Athena so that he does not offend her protégé Odysseus directly. The figure also appears in Hartmut Lange's The Murder of Aias or a discourse on chopping wood . The tragedy Ajace by Ugo Foscolo should also be mentioned. The author Ilse Aichinger published a text in 1968 with the title Ajax . For example, the playwright Heiner Müller wrote the poem Ajax in 1994 . Apart from Sophocles' tragedy, the other works mentioned did not meet with a great response.

Aias occupies a central position in Friedrich Hölderlin's self-image as a poet. Meinhard Knigge sees the identification with the hero contained in the translation of the Sophoclean Aias, in the epistle novel Hyperion as in the poem Mnemosyne . In the ode, Holderlin deals with the downfall of the Telamonier and other Achaean heroes. Aias stands for the angry self-assertion of a hero who, lonely, far from his home and with the prospect of not being adequately buried, has to throw himself into his sword in order to restore his honor. A self-identification of Hölderlin with Aias in the poem is also assumed by Roland-Jensen Flemming. Holderlin, like Aias, who was struck by divine madness, feared an approaching mental illness and, as a poet, defended the claim from his own abilities - in contrast to Achilles, Aias is not of direct divine descent, unlike Agamemnon and Menelaus, and neither is nor a powerful king like Diomedes and Odysseus a protégé of the gods, but only a hero because of his outstanding physique and virtue - to create a work. Self-identification also serves to contain the mood that is self-endangering or damaging, because in contrast to Aias, self-assertion in the downfall should at least be sublimated through moderation, as Holderlin put it in the poem To the Parzen : “But what is sacred to me is once in my heart I like the poem, well done, welcome then, o silence of the shadowy world! ”Aias is thus both a role model and a warning.

In 2017, the writer Elfriede Jelinek edited the Aias motif in a montage with the headline Our 2.0 .

Others

The classical archaeologist Raimund Wünsche interprets the torso of the Belvedere as a representation of the Ajax.

The Dutch football club Ajax Amsterdam , founded on March 18, 1900, named itself after the ancient Greek hero.

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Homer, Iliad 3,226-227
  2. ↑ Ovid, Metamorphosen 13, 394-396
  3. ↑ Aias also points out in Sophocles that his name is similar to the cry of lament; s. Sophocles, Aias 430.
  4. ↑ Hellmuth Flashar: Sophocles Aias . Transferred from Wolfgang Schadewaldt, ed. by Hellmut Flashar. Frankfurt 1993, p. 90
  5. ^ Aichinger, Ilse: "Ajax", in: Neue Rundschau , 79th year 1968, issue 3, pp. 435-438. Published again in this: works. Stories (1958-1968). Eliza Eliza. , Fischer: Frankfurt am Main 1991, pp. 179-185.
  6. ↑ Cf. Meinhard Knigge: Hölderlin and Aias or a necessary identification , in: Hölderlin Jahrbuch Bd. 24, ed. by Bernhard Böschenstein and Gerhard Kurz. Tübingen 1984/85, pp. 264-282.
  7. ^ Roland-Jensen Flemming: Hölderlin's Muse. Edition and interpretation of the hymn. The nymph Mnemosyne. Würzburg 1989, p. 119.
  8. ↑ Cf. Meinhard Knigge: Hölderlin and Aias or a necessary identification , in: Hölderlin Jahrbuch Bd. 24, ed. by Bernhard Böschenstein and Gerhard Kurz. Tübingen 1984/85, pp. 278-282.
  9. ↑ Jelinek, Elfriede: "Our 2.0"
  10. ↑ Raimund Wünsche: The Torso from the Belvedere, monument of the pensive Aias. In: Munich Yearbook of Fine Arts. 44, 1993, pp. 7-46.

literature

Web links

Commons : Aias  - collection of images, videos and audio files