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During the Trojan War, Aias fought Hektor while Achilleus sulked over an argument with Agamemnon. Aias wounded but did not kill him. He did kill Phorkys. During the fight over the body of Patroklos, his prayer to the gods to clear the fog which has descended over the battle is promptly granted by Zeus. In Homer's Odyssey, with the aid of AthenaThis article is about the goddess Athena. For other uses see Athena (disambiguation). Aegina Athena ( Phoenician Onga also transliterated as Athene the Greek goddess of wisdom, strategy, and war associated by the Romans with their Etruscan goddess Minerva, Aias rescued the body of Achilleus from the hands of the Trojans. In the competition between him and OdysseusThis article is about the mythological character. See also Odysseus crater, Ulysses (robot), Ulysses (novel Odysseus Laertiades (Greek: ', 'son of Laertes'), or simply Odysseus is a character in Greek mythology, known as Ulysses or Ulixes in Roman mytholo for the armour of Achilles, Agamemnon, at the instigation of AthenaThis article is about the goddess Athena. For other uses see Athena (disambiguation). Aegina Athena ( Phoenician Onga also transliterated as Athene the Greek goddess of wisdom, strategy, and war associated by the Romans with their Etruscan goddess Minerva, awarded the prize to Odysseus. This so enraged Aias that it caused his death ( Odyssey, xi. 541). According to a later and more detailed story, his disappointment drove him mad; he rushed out of his tent and fell upon the flocks of sheep in the camp under the impression that they were the Trojan enemy; on coming to his senses, in shame he killed himself with the sword which he had received as a present from Hektor. This is the account of his death given in the Aias of SophoclesSophocles ( 4961— 406 BC; Greek: Sigma;οφοκλη&sigmaf was an ancient Greek playwright, dramatist, priest, and politician of Athens. He is known as the second of the three great Greek tragedians; Sophocles was 30 years y; in PindarPindar (or Pindarus ( 522 BC 443 BC), the greatest lyric poet of ancient Greece, was born at Cynoscephalae, a village in Thebes. He was the son of Daiphantus and Cleodice. The traditions of his family have left their impression on his poetry, and are not's " NemeaNemea is an ancient site near the head of the valley of the Nemea River in the Peloponnessus of Greece. Formerly part of the territory of Cleonae in the Argolid, it is today in the prefecture of Corinth. The modern village of Iraklion is nearby, while New", 7; and in OvidFor other uses, see Ovid (disambiguation Publius Ovidius Naso ( March 20, 43 BC AD 17) Roman poet known to the English-speaking world as Ovid wrote on topics of love, abandoned women, and mythological transformations. Ovid wrote in elegiac couplets, with, Metamorphoses, xiii. 1). From his blood sprang a red flower, as at the death of Hyacinthus, which bore on its leaves the initial letters of his name Ai, also expressive of lament ( Pausanias i. 35. 4). His ashes were deposited in a golden urn on the Rhoetean promontory at the entrance of the Hellespont.

Like Achilleus; he is represented as living after his death in the island of Leuke at the mouth of the Danube (Pausanias iii. 19. 11). Aias, who in the post-Homeric legend is described as the grandson of Aeacus and the great-grandson of Zeus, was the tutelary hero of the island of Salamis, where he had a temple and an image, and where a festival called Aianteia was celebrated in his honour (Pausanias i. 35). At this festival a couch was set up, on which the panoply of the hero was placed, a practice which recalls the Roman lectisternium. The identification of Aias with the family of Aeacus was chiefly a matter which concerned the Athenians, after Salamis had come into their possession, on which occasion Solon is said to have inserted a line in the Iliad (book ii. 557 or 558), for the purpose of supporting the Athenian claim to the island. Aias then became an Attic hero; he was worshipped at Athens, where he had a statue in the market-place, and the tribe Aiantis was called after his name.

Many illustrious Athenians -- Cimon, Miltiades, Alcibiades, the historian Thucydides -- traced their descent from Aias.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. 1911 Britannica

The laundry detergent brand Ajax's slogan is "Stronger than dirt", presumably in the mythological reference.