baejax-the-great

[baejax-the-great]

Halsin is one of my most favourite characters but I've never drawn him before!

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replaying hades again

Really been busy updating portfo n doing commmish so a bit of personal art time is nice

[baejax-the-great]

[baejax-the-great]

Life is hard but Esquie is soft so all is wheeeeee

[baejax-the-great]

could you tell us more about the versions of ajax's death?

I would love to.

Ajax is an old, old myth that started out as part of an oral tradition, so it stands to reason that there were multiple versions of his death until the canonization of the epic cycle, but even then the story still evolved as various authors wrote their take on it.

I mentioned in a recent post that outside of Homer, Ajax was known to be invulnerable thanks to Heracles blessing him with the Nemean Lion skin. This makes killing him kind of tricky. Even in the Iliad, where Homer doesn't acknowledge the supernatural aspects of his heroes, Ajax is one of the few who doesn't sustain a single injury over the course of the story.

Like the myth of Achilles with the vulnerable heel, Ajax was said to have vulnerable areas. There was a version where he was the one shot in the heel with an arrow by Paris and he died from blood loss when the arrow was removed from his body back in camp, but more commonly he was vulnerable in his side or his throat (I am also very vulnerable to death when being stabbed in these areas). In most versions of his suicide depicted, he falls on his sword somewhere in his torso, so presumably he hits that specific vulnerable area in his side. I'm not sure if any of the suicides depicted have him piercing his own throat with his sword.

There was another pre-Homeric version of his death in which the Trojans killed him by throwing earth at him. I've chosen to interpret this as them attempting to bury him alive given that they cannot stab him to death. Interestingly, Ajax is the only Homeric hero whose dead body is interred rather than cremated, and a lot of theories have been proposed as to why. I think it was Sophocles who put it in his play that being interred was a punishment for his outrage against the other generals, but historians generally discount that interpretation. Interment was at no point considered a dishonorable way of dealing with a body, so it didn't make sense. Some historians hearken it back to other aspects of Ajax being anachronistic compared to his Iliad compatriots-- his shield, for example, is described in the older Mycenean style rather than getting the classical update contemporary with Homer's time like the rest of them. Most recently I read a theory that his interment might have been a nod to this history of invulnerability and the belief that covering an invulnerable person in dirt was the only way to kill them. Basically you give the person a direct route to the Underworld by sticking them... under the world.

Okay, but eventually everyone settled on the version of Ajax's death where he commits suicide. This version underwent substantial evolution over time. The oldest version (so far as I've seen as I wander my way through history books) goes like this: Agamemnon doesn't know what to do with the Arms of Achilles. He's afraid if he gives them to Ajax, the new Greatest of the Greeks, that the other men will lose their shit and start rioting (some may interpret this as a reflection of his piss poor leadership abilities). So, instead of making the call himself, he decides to let Trojans settle the matter. There are two version of this, one in which they ask their Trojan hostages to decide who is the better warrior, Ajax or Odysseus, and one in which they eavesdrop on some Trojan women talking about the warriors.

In both of these versions, Athena intervenes to make sure they declare Odysseus the victor. Two points here-- one is that in this oldest version of the story, Odysseus doesn't do anything to win. There's no trickery on his part. He's just there, and Athena picks him. The second point is that one of the key aspects of Ajax's character throughout all of his stories is that Athena fucking hates him. The feeling is kind of mutual. I could write a whole new post about this, but Odysseus doesn't factor into her decision necessarily--she's not favoring Odysseus, she's fucking over Ajax, who she hates.

After the decision, Ajax goes mad (more on this later), possibly kills some animals, and kills himself with Hector's sword.

It is only much later that we get versions where there is some sort of contest of words going on and complicity of Odysseus with Athena's scheme. This evolves more and more over time until it becomes "Ajax is an idiot who can't string two words together and Odysseus is a wordsmith." Whatever. Ovid's version is pretty hilarious with Ajax killing himself in front of everyone while bellowing something along the lines of "Try winning the war without me, dipshits."

The madness that Ajax suffers also changes over time. In the beginning, it's kind of vague. He goes mad. This could mean he got really super angry. It could also mean... he was put into a headspace where killing himself seemed like a reasonable response. Most people accept that state as a form of madness. It's only later that his madness is attributed to Athena--she made him mad rather than it being a natural consequence of his accomplishments going unacknowledged after ten years of war and also watching his friends die and lugging their corpses around etc etc. This also gets to the animals he slaughtered--in some version, he just does it. Because he's mad. In some versions, it's suggested he kills them because he won them for the Greeks, and if the Greeks don't appreciate him, by god they are not going to get to enjoy the spoils of his labor. Sorry, sheep. And in Sophocles' late version, Athena's madness causes him to imagine the cows are various Greek generals (Agamemnon and Odysseus and others) and he tortures them thinking he's torturing the generals. When he realizes what he's done, he kills himself.

What's interesting to me is that the evolution of Ajax's suicide seems to simplify his motives for doing so and make him a less compelling character. Well, he was driven mad by a goddess. And he wasn't very bright to begin with. And he killed himself to deny the Greeks his service (as if he couldn't have just gone the fuck home with all his cows).

The original suicide story as I understand it is a man who has proved himself ten times over, who everyone knows is the greatest among them, and who still gets passed over and disrespected by his fellow soldiers who all know the truth. There is nothing Ajax can do that will get other people to recognize him, and when he realizes this, that he will never accomplish his goals, this drives him "mad." He loses his purpose for living, and he dies.

[baejax-the-great]

[baejax-the-great]

ok I know I'm not the first to do this redraw of the viral star war guys BUT there weren't any yet with Fitz on the other end of the cuddle. let him be Small

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My beautiful voidbeast

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thinking about them a normal amount

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“Anyway, do let me know if you need anything else. Such as lending a hand putting on that suit of yours.”

“Or taking it off, yeah. ”

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Eughhhhhh I miss fitzloved

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go ahead atheists... would you hit him out of the park for a million dollars?

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althea should be at the club, brashen should be at the club, wintrow should still be at the monastery, kyle should be defenestrated, and malta should be at claire’s (where she sneaks away from keffria to window shop at forever 21 instead)

[baejax-the-great]

Ajax the Great!

here he issss my design of the little cutie patootie

I'm gonna slowly churn out my old art here so don't mind me......... Still figuring stuff out so sorry if my posts aren't formatted nicely I don't give a gaf (I give a gaf)

Just gonna paste my ig post caption here I forgot to do that for Aphrodite but we ball

SOME DETAILS ABOUT HIS DESIGN! vv

-RED FLOWERS similar to the ones that sprouted from his blood when he died 🌹 they're on his bandana/headband (he has a matching one with Teucer!), necklace, around his waist, on the cloth tied around his sword, and even engraved into his sword and shield if you look closely! - BOAR TOOTH EARRING as in some accounts, ajax took part in the Calydonian boar hunt (although the timelines don't seem to add up to me? Unless Ajax is super old somehow, which wouldn't make sense since he's explicitly much younger than Odysseus... Eh whatever... These timelines never make sense anyway...) - YES HE IS SUNBURNT get my boy some spf50!!! -TRIDENT & WAVES on his shield, as although Ajax has no patron God (and took pride in that in Sophocles' play about his death!), Poseidon did bless him once in the Iliad! Plus, his feud with Odysseus just makes me excited to add little nods to Poseidon, and I needed something to put on his shield lol - HES A WIDDLE CUTIE PATOOTIE awwwwisnt he so cute my widdle guy awwhhh he's just a widdle guy guyssss look he's a widdle guy... - ALL I HAD TO WORK WITH was very little (like many of these guys, there's barely any description of their looks), all I had was that he was super huge, bearded, and had dark curly hair, so I tried my best to incorporate that!

And here's some low effort doodles of him and achilles and ody

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The song of Achilles

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How are people not shipping Diomedes x Paris

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some doodles of one of my favorite tsoa scenes