Ajax

2000 years before a London playwright by the name of William Shakespeare began honing the world’s most famous plays, the Ancient Greeks were creating the art form. Right in the thick of it was Sophocles, who along with Aeschylus and Euripides form the great trinity of Greek playwrights.

While there were certainly other Greek playwrights, it is the works of these three that have survived, and Sophocles is often regarded as the best of them, as he was back then. The Suda, a Middle Ages encyclopedia, credited Sophocles with writing over 100 plays and winning dozens of competitions in Athens during its Golden Age.

Of Sophocles’ plays, only a handful survived in their completed form. One of them is Ajax, a dramatization of the story of Ajax the Great during the Trojan War. One of the Greeks’ best fighters, Ajax is upset that upon Achilles’ death, his armor is given to Odysseus rather than him, and he plots revenge on Greek leaders, including Odysseus and Agamemnon. Homer covers the story of Ajax and his ultimate fate in the Iliad, but Sophocles does so in a more concentrated and artful manner, making Ajax one of the world’s first great tragedies.

This edition is specially formatted for the Kindle, and includes numerous images and a linked Table of Contents.