Archaeologia Adriatica, Vol. 12 No. 1, 2018.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.15291/archeo.3027
A storm on the Gyraean rocks and the death of Ajax the Lesser
Marina Milićević Bradač
; University of Zagreb, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Archaeology, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Myth has it that Ajax the Lesser (son of Oileus and also known as Locrian) was killed in a storm on the Gyraean Rocks. Scholars have been trying to locate the rocks ever since Classical Antiquity: from Euboea and Cape Caphareus across Andros and Tênos all the way to Myconos. Their location has remained unknown not so much because it was part of a mythical rather than real geography but rather because with time it has faded into oblivion. Ajax the Lesser was a "threshold creature", one of the figures that symbolises the crossing from this world into the otherworld, who later entered heroic epics as a "historical" hero who fought at Troy, known for his desecration and crimes for which the gods punished him by sending a storm against him as he returned from Troy.
Keywords
Ajax the Lesser – son of Oileus – Locrian; Gyraean Rocks; Akra Gyreon; Andros; Tênos; Myconos; threshold into the otherworld
Hrčak ID:
241093
URI
Publication date:
8.7.2020.
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