Henri Serrur (1794-1865)A reproduction of the rare and classic painting by the French Neo-classical great, Henri Serrur. It was painted in 1820. The Death of Ajax.Homer is somewhat vague about the precise manner of Ajax's death but does ascribe it to his loss in the dispute over Achilles's armour: when Odysseus visits Hades, he begs the soul of Ajax to speak to him, but Ajax, still resentful over the old quarrel, refuses and descends silently back into Erebus. Henri Serrur has captured wonderfully the dramatic death of Ajax. Like Achilles, he is represented (although not by Homer) as living after his death in the island of Leuke at the mouth of the Danube. 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 honor. 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.
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