Ajax preparing for suicide in a depiction by the black-figure vase painter Exekias, ca. 540 BCE. Ajax, as he appears in this play, in the
Iliad, and other myths, is a heroic figure, a "rugged giant", with strength, courage and the ability to think quickly well beyond the normal standards of mankind. He was considered a legendary character to the people of ancient Athens. Numerous Homeric myths describe him coming to the rescue of his fellow man in dire moments.
Hugh Lloyd-Jones points out that many authorities consider
Ajax an early play, but he suggests that if the text excludes material that he has bracketed, then it would seem to be a "mature masterpiece, probably not much earlier than
Oedipus Tyrannus". Lloyd-Jones considers various lines that have been taken by critics interpreting the play, and finds that some consider that the Greek gods are being portrayed by Sophocles as just, and that when Ajax suffers it is a learning experience for the character and the audience. Other interpretations of the play, according to Lloyd-Jones, instead consider that Ajax is being portrayed heroically in defiance of the unjust and capricious gods. Lloyd-Jones notes that Ajax's murderous intention in this play is not softened by the playwright, and the difficult aspects of his character are fully depicted, but in spite of that Sophocles shows profound sympathy for the greatness of Ajax, and appreciation for the bravery in Ajax's realization that suicide is the only choice – if he is to maintain his conception of honor and his sense of self. In another interpretation, Robert Bagg and James Scully point out that the play is composed in two distinct parts; the first part is steeped in the old world, a world of kings and heroes, and the second part resembles more the democratic world of Sophocles' Greece, and is marked by an imperfect debate of contending ideas. Bagg and Scully consider that the play, with its two parts, may be seen as an important epoch-spanning work that raises complex questions, including: How does 5th-century Greece advance from the old world into the new? Especially considering that Greece, in its stories and thoughts, clings to and reveres the old world? And while clinging to the past, Greece considers that its new, democratic order is important and vital. As Bagg and Scully contend, Ajax, with his brute force, has been a great warrior-hero of the old world, but the Trojan war itself has changed and become a quagmire; what's needed now is a warrior who is intelligent – someone like Odysseus. Ultimately, according to Bagg and Scully's interpretation, Ajax must still be respected, and the end of the play demonstrates respect and human decency with the promise of a proper burial. John Moore interprets the play as primarily a character study of Ajax, who, when he first appears, covered in the blood of the animals that he in his madness has killed, presents an image of total degradation; the true action of the play, according to Moore, is how this image is transformed from degradation, as Ajax recovers his heroic power and humanity. The play, according to Moore, personifies in Ajax an affirmation of what is heroic in life. Translators
Frederic Raphael and
Kenneth McLeish called the work a "masterpiece", arguing that "Sophocles turned the almost comic myth of a bad loser into a tragedy of disappointment, folly, and divine partiality." Bernard Knox considers Ajax's speech on "time" to be "so majestic, remote and mysterious, and at the same time so passionate, dramatic and complex" that if this were the only writing we had of Sophocles, he would still be considered "one of the world's greatest poets." The speech begins: Long rolling waves of time bring all things to light and plunge them down again in utter darkness. In a study of the phenomenon of
suicide bombers, one author, Arata Takeda, says that though in the end it does not quite work out that way, Ajax's death resembles that kind of strategy, when Ajax calls on the
Erinyes, the "avenging deities of the underworld", to destroy his foes. ==Performance history==