Ajax, the name of two of the Greek heroes in the Trojan war: (1) Ajax the Less, son of Oileus, king of the Locrians. He led forty ships to Troy, and was famous for swiftness of foot and skill in hurling the spear. At the capture of the city he excited the anger of Pallas by an insult offered in her temple to Cassandra, and on the homeward voyage he was overtaken by the vengeance of the goddess, and swallowed up by the waves.
(2) Ajax the Greater, son of Telamon, king of Salamis, and by his mother's side a grandson of Æacus. He sailed against Troy with twelve ships, and is represented by Homer as, next to Achilles, the bravest and handsomest of the Greeks. After the death of Achilles, Ajax and Ulysses contended for the arms of the hero, and the prize was adjudged to Ulysses, which threw Ajax into such a state of rage and despair that he killed himself with his sword. This is the subject of one of the noblest of the extant tragedies of Sophocles.