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Ajax   /ˈeɪdʒˌæks/   Listen
Ajax

noun
1.
A mythical Greek hero; a warrior who fought against Troy in the Iliad.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Ajax" Quotes from Famous Books



... flung in death Along the rugged rocks Silenian. And Dadaces no longer leads his troop, But, smitten by the spear, from off the prow Hath lightly leaped to death; and Tenagon, In true descent a Bactrian nobly born, Drifts by the sea-lashed reefs of Salamis, The isle of Ajax. Gone Lilaeus too, Gone are Arsames and Argestes! all, Around the islet where the sea-doves breed, Dashed their defeated heads on iron rocks; Arcteus, who dwelt beside the founts of Nile, Adeues, Pheresseues, and with them Pharnuchus, from one galley's ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... always vital, always consistent, always vigorous! I remember I used to look, in those days, upon every three-volume novel with a sort of veneration, as a feat—not possibly of literature—but at least of physical and moral endurance and the courage of Ajax. ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Prepared to seal their victory with his blood; Cobb, Dearborn, Laurens, Tilghman, green in years But ripe in glory, tower'd amid their peers; Death-daring Hamilton with splendor shone, And claim'd each post of danger for his own, Skill'd every arm in war's whole hell to wield, An Ithacus in camp, an Ajax in the field. ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... was often accustomed to compare Ajax to the "Deaf un,"— not because he was hard of hearing, ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh

... of thoughts and of knowledge: ever creating, comparing, disposing, and improving. Hence, while bodily strength is the token of barbarian power, mental ability is the honourable badge of civilized states. The one is like Ajax, the other like Ulysses; civilized nations are constructive, barbarous are destructive. Civilization spreads by the ways of peace, by moral suasion, by means of literature, the arts, commerce, diplomacy, institutions; and, though material power never can be superseded, it is subordinate ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... all-penetrating. In a Greek song of to-day a mother sends a message to an absent daughter by the sun; it is but an unconscious repetition of the request of the dying Ajax that the heavenly body will tell his fate to his old father ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... four things are suitable, because the noble Nature reveals them in it, even as the Song says. And that the example given may be the more memorable, AEacus says that he was the father of Telamon and Peleus and of Phocus, from which Telamon sprang Ajax and from Peleus Achilles. ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri

... accompanied in the delivery by every species of grimace and buffoonery, and a fierceness of dramatic action and posture far more ludicrously affecting than the classic attitudes of Gen. Tom Thumb, who was defying the lightning, as Ajax, dying like the Gladiator, and taking snuff like Napoleon, in the room overhead. At the bottom of all this ridiculous exhibition, which drew repeated shouts of laughter from the very large and respectable audience, lay two ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... the demonstration, peered from one of the windows, and saw one half of the huge mob melt swiftly away under the command of a tall, majestic- looking creature, whose massive form and leonine head appeared Ajax- like above the throng; and he watched the other half turn round in brisk order, like a well-drilled army, and march off, singing loudly and lustily, headed by a woman carried shoulder-high before them, whose white robes gleamed like ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... have done it exactly according to the practice of almost all the ancients, who were never accused of being plagiaries for building their tragedies on known fables. Thus, Augustus Caesar wrote an "Ajax," which was not the less his own, because Euripides had written a play before him on that subject. Thus, of late years, Corneille writ an "OEdipus" after Sophocles; and I have designed one after him, which I wrote with Mr Lee; yet neither the French poet ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... your Galileo now, Your hero that like Ajax should defy The lightning? Yesterday I saw him stand Trembling before our court of Cardinals, Trembling before the colour of their robes As sheep, before the slaughter, at the sight And smell of blood. His ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes

... the first part a history containing the Rape of Helen, the Siege of Troy, the Combat between Hector and Ajax. Hector and Troilus slain by Achilles, the Death of Ajax, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... suggestion and make a country famous with a legend. It is one thing to remark and to dissect, with the most cutting logic, the complications of life, and of the human spirit; it is quite another to give them body and blood in the story of Ajax[14] or of Hamlet. The first is literature, but the second is something besides, for it is ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Argos, 80 each. Forty ships were manned by the Elians, under four different chiefs; the like number under Meges from Dulichium and the Echinades, and under Thoas from Calydon and the other AEtolian towns. Odysseus from Ithaca, and Ajax from Salamis, brought 12 ships each. The Abantes from Euboea, under Elphenor, filled 40 vessels; the Boeotians, under Peneleos and Leitus, 50; the inhabitants of Orchomenus and Aspledon, 30; the light-armed Locrians, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... all, with one consent, praise new-born gauds, Though they are made and moulded of things past; And give to dust, that is a little gilt, More land than gilt o'erdusted. The present eye praises the present object: Then marvel not, thou great and complete man, That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax; Since things in motion sooner catch the eye Than what not stirs: The cry went once on thee, And still it might, and yet it may again, If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive, And case thy reputation in thy tent; Whose glorious deeds, did but in ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... offender, with a view to having him arrested. They went on in this strain until quite eight or ten muscular men had formed a cordon round the transgressor. "What did I say?" he enquired, plaintively. "You said a lot too much," was the crushing retort. One Ajax finally removed his coat and invited the Radical to a fistic encounter in the garden—if he felt aggrieved. The challenge was declined, more in sorrow than in anger, and the ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... or you? While without other either falls to wrack, And light must eyes, or eyes their light must lack. She without you, a diamond sunk in mine, Its worth unprized, to self alone must shine; You without her, like hands bereft of head, Like Ajax rage, by blindfold lust misled. She light, you eyes; she head, and you the hands, In fair proportion knit by heavenly hands; Servants in queen, and queen in servants blest; Your only glory, how to serve her best; And hers how best the adventurous ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... is, then, that this famous city is supposed to have stood. Yonder mounds, perchance, cover the resting-places of Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax, Hector, and many other heroes who may have served their country as faithfully as these, though their names do not live in the page of history. How gladly would I have trodden the plain, there to muse on the ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... Ajax in his despair quibble upon his own name quite in the Shakespearian fashion, under similar circumstances? Nor does the coarseness with which our great poet is reproached lack an Aeschylean parallel. Even the Nurse ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... you; but think of its loss if anything happened to me. I don't intend to be wiped out by a beastly sand-storm. I intend to live to write a book on Mur," and Higgs shook his fist at the advancing clouds with an air that was really noble. It reminded me of Ajax defying ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... in his mouth conveyed the highest praise, is a 'sturdier' fellow in many ways than I was, and writes better than I could at his age. One achievement of the son rather extorted than attracted his father's praise. He appeared in a Greek play as Ajax, a part for which his massive frame and generally noble appearance fitted him admirably. The father admitted that he had a certain dislike to a man's exhibiting himself personally, but was reconciled by observing ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... spade and axe—his thumb-nail would have covered either of the tiny creatures as his shield covered Ajax. ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... and quivering leafage having exactly the melancholy expression of fragility, faintness, and inconstancy which the ancients attributed to the disembodied spirit.[94] The likeness to the poplars by the streams of Amiens is more marked still in the Iliad, where the young Simois, struck by Ajax, falls to the earth "like an aspen that has grown in an irrigated meadow, smooth-trunked, the soft shoots springing from its top, which some coach-making man has cut down with his keen iron, that he may fit a wheel of it to a fair chariot, and it lies parching ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... the dead, which fills the chants of their tragedy? I suppose if anything like nearness or firmness of faith in afterlife is to be found in Greek legend, you might look for it in the stories about the Island of Leuce, at the mouth of the Danube, inhabited by the ghosts of Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax the son of Oileus, and Helen; and in which the pavement of the Temple of Achilles was washed daily by the sea-birds with their wings, dipping them in ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... the west Histria and on the north the Danube. Now this king we have mentioned carried on 60 wars with the Greeks, and in their course he slew in battle Thesander, the leader of Greece. But while he was making a hostile attack upon Ajax and was pursuing Ulysses, his horse became entangled in some vines and fell. He himself was thrown and wounded in the thigh by a javelin of Achilles, so that for a long time he could not be healed. Yet, despite his wound, he drove the Greeks from ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes

... fashion. "Ajax suggests somebody who defies lightning and fools about with a spear. It's a silly name. A maiden aunt persuaded my mother to give it to me. I think she mixed it up with Achilles. She admired the statue in Hyde Park. She got ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... him come in. Were he as cunning in his Eloquence As Cicero, the famous man of Rome, His words would be as chaff against the wind. Sweet tongued Ulysses that made Ajax mad, Were he and his tongue in this speaker's head, Alive he wins me not; ...
— Cromwell • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... comparison with the heroes of old whom he had known[253]. 'But,' said Knight and Price, 'that passage is spurious.' However, I will not part with it. It is interesting to compare the same characters (Ajax, for instance) as treated by Homer, and then afterwards by the Greek dramatists, and to mark the difference of handling. In the plays of Euripides, politics come in as a disturbing force: Homer's characters act on physical impulse. There is more introversion in the dramatist: whence Aristotle ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... your handmaid you need feel no shame. Don't apologize, Xanthias, pray; Remember, Achilles the proud felt a flame For Brissy, his slave, as they say. Old Telamon's son, fiery Ajax, was moved By the captive Tecmessa's ripe charms; And Atrides, suspending the feast, it behooved To gather a ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field

... way suited to him. But these seven damsels interpose themselves, like the sevenfold shield of Ajax. There is something very attractive in ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... went only to find a hideous death. Then did Meleager resolve that he would rid the land of this monster, and called on all his friends, the heroes of Greece, to come to his aid. Theseus and his friend Pirithous came; Jason; Peleus, afterwards father of Achilles; Telamon, the father of Ajax; Nestor, then but a youth; Castor and Pollux, and Toxeus and Plexippus, the brothers of Althaea, the fair queen-mother. But there came none more fearless nor more ready to fight the monster boar of Calydon than Atalanta, the daughter of the king ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... any other, the purser as likely to make his communication at that moment as later, and the fly as likely to resuscitate the patient as the surgeon. But the characterization in this book is wonderful; every name becomes an acquaintance, from Mrs. Beresford, dividing Ajax's emotion and declining to be drowned in the dark, with her servant Ramgolam and his matchless Orientalisms, up to the loftier models, one of whom he endows with this exquisite bit ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... upon her throne, with shining eyes, scornful lips, and arms tightly folded under her cashmere shawl, with that haughty gesture familiar to her, the young woman looked as invulnerable under this light wrap as if she had been covered with Ajax's shield, formed, if we can credit Homer, of seven bulls' hides and a sheet ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... but to put the sails to the yards, slip their cables and follow us; and in this confusion of making ready for fighting we set out for sea in the dark after the French fleet. Here I could have exclaimed with Ajax, ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano

... our wine with a merry heart, as the Scripture expresses it, we think we are sufficient for ourselves; strong, happy, and beloved, we believe, like Ajax, we shall be able to escape every storm in spite of the gods. But later in life, when the back is bowed, when happiness proves a fading flower, and the affections grow chill-then, in fear of the void and the darkness, we stretch out our arms, like the child overtaken by night, and we call for help ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... for a moment. The good and royal Yudhishthir, (I omit the final a in some long names which occur frequently), the "tiger-waisted" Bhima, and the "helmet-wearing" Arjun are the Agamemnon, the Ajax, and the Achilles of the Indian Epic. The proud and unyielding Duryodhan, and the fierce and fiery Duhsasan stand out foremost among the wrathful sons of the feeble old Kuru monarch. And Krishna possesses a character ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous

... Fleming, like a second Ajax, grim with dust and blood, working with his own hands the great engine which he had lately helped to erect, and at the same time giving heedful eye to ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... Schlegel considers the Cyclops. Mr. Twining, in his amusing and instructive notes on Aristotle's Poetics, refers to the drunken jollity of Hercules in the Alcestis, and to the ludicrous dialogue between Ulysses and Minerva, in the first scene of the Ajax of Sophocles, as instances of Greek tragi-comedy. We may add the Electra of Euripides; for if the poet did not intend to burlesque the rules of tragic composition in many of the scenes of that play, and to make his audience laugh, he calculated on more dull gravity in Athens, than we are accustomed ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... Jim," said Jordan. "Thet sounds as it useter when yo' read to us in ther old house thar in Texas. What war thet book that told all 'bout Lissis and Ajax, the hoss-tamer Diamed, and the boss fighters, Killes and Hector, and ther pretty gal Helen, that raised all the hel-lo, and Dromine, the squar woman thet war Hector's wife, and hed the kid thet war afeerd of the ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin

... known by the name of Pompey living to the age of 70. Elephants have been known to live to the age of 400 years. When Alexander the Great had conquered Porus, King of India, he took a great elephant which had fought valiantly for the king, and named him Ajax, dedicated him to the sun, and let him go with this inscription, "Alexander, the son of Jupiter, dedicated Ajax to the sun." The elephant was found with this inscription 350 years after. Pigs have been known ...
— Harper's Young People, November 25, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... did they call the darting hurls or slinging casts of the Vulcanian thunderbolts, did only appertain to her and to Jupiter her father capital. This was verified in the conflagration of the ships of Ajax Oileus, nor doth this fulminating power belong to any other of the Olympic gods. Men, therefore, stand not in such fear of them. Moreover, I will tell you, and you may take it as extracted out of the profoundest mysteries of mythology, that, when the giants had enterprised ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... not mean to!" thundered the young Ajax, to whose vanity, ——'s speech had been gall; "my powers are discretionary: I arrest you in the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... patriotism from Hector, of tenderness from Andromache, of age from Nestor. The galleys of Rome were, the line-of-battle ships of France and England still are, called after his heroes. The Agamemnon long bore the flag of Nelson; the Ajax perished by the flames within sight of the tomb of the Telamonian hero, on the shores of the Hellespont; the Achilles was blown up at the battle of Trafalgar. Alexander the Great ran round the tomb of Achilles before undertaking the conquest of Asia. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... piteous is the slaughter, at the sight Of Argive helms for Argive foes mista'en. Now too, with shouts of fury and disdain To see the maiden rescued, here and there The Danaans gathering round us, charge amain; Fierce-hearted Ajax, the Atridan pair, And all Thessalia's host ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... can question the probability of a gentleman marrying anybody? How many of the wise and learned have married their cooks? Did not Lord Eldon himself, the most prudent of men, make a runaway match? Were not Achilles and Ajax both in love with their servant maids? And are we to expect a heavy dragoon with strong desires and small brains, who had never controlled a passion in his life, to become prudent all of a sudden, and to refuse to pay any price for an indulgence to which he had a mind? If people ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... with theatrical exhibitions, that he formed a kind of play from "Ogilby's Iliad," with some verses of his own intermixed, which he persuaded his schoolfellows to act, with the addition of his master's gardener, who personated Ajax. ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... making the excavations and discoveries which led to the location of the lost city of Troy. In this ancient city of Troy, according to Homer, the beautiful Grecian princess Helen, abducted by Paris, the son of the King of Troy, was detained for ten years. The enraged Greeks under Ulysses and Ajax, seeking to rescue the princess, besieged the city and finally succeeded in entering its gates and accomplishing their purpose by means of the stratagem ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob

... congruity in these strange gestures. It is as though when walking by the side of some revered prophet, one were suddenly conscious that the man was skipping or putting out his tongue. It is as though we caught Ajax masquerading as a mummer, or Aeschylus dressed up in cap ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... crisis I see myself quite plainly as if I were some other person; poets often do, you know; and I could not help thinking of the pose of Ajax defying ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis

... appointed as first lieutenant of the Ajax, a thirty-six gun frigate, fitting-out for the Pacific station. On his arrival at Portsmouth, he at once repaired on board, taking Ben with him. As they pulled up the harbour in a shore boat towards the frigate, ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston

... corpse-strewn field. They gazed fiercely round them, well knowing that ere long they must be like those lying dead at their feet. Still they fought on, keeping their assailants at bay. In their midst was a chief, known by his tall plume and stalwart figure, a very Ajax in appearance. Cetchwayo, seeing the determined resistance offered, and that numbers of his men were falling, summoned a company of his own regiment, and led them on to the attack. The struggle was fierce, but of short duration. Scarcely a minute elapsed before ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston

... streaming with blood with a revolting exaggeration. Also left, Judith and Holofernes in bronze, by Donatello. Behind Perseus is the Rape of Polixena, amarble group, by Pio Fedi, in 1864. In the centre is an antique group supposed to represent Ajax dragging the body of Patrocles—restored by S.Ricci. Next it is the marble group, by G.Bologna, representing Hercules slaying the Centaur. In this Piazza is also the Fountain of Neptune, by Ammanati (pupil of Bandinelli), 1571. It is crowded ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... pure heat—under its action matter became hotter and hotter as long as it was applied, the upper limit being only the theoretical maximum of temperature. Ray five-eight was high-tension, high-frequency alternating current. Any conductor in its path behaved precisely as it would in the Ajax-Northrup induction furnace, which can boil platinum in ten seconds! These three rays composed the beam which Seaton directed upon the mass of metal from which the enemy had elected to continue the battle—and behind each ray, instead of the small energy at the command of its Osnomian inventor, ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... exultingly, dilating his nostrils and chest; and looked proudly up and around, like Ajax defying ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... number of the letters of the ancient Greek alphabet are of the same form as those of the Etruscan alphabet; but there are in the latter some particular characters which will prevent any confusion. The names of the personages on the vases are spelt differently from those on the Greek, as Ainas for Ajax, Atreste for Adrastus, Akle for Achilles, Alesti for Alcestis, etc. We must also observe, that Etruscan painted vases are very rare, and are but few in number, compared with those for which we are indebted to the arts ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... the English were too much occupied in making the provisions necessary to save their remaining spars, to risk much in order to swell an advantage that was already so considerable. Some distant firing passed between the Thunderer and Dublin, and l'Ajax, le Dugay Trouin, and l'Hector, before the two former succeeded in getting Lord Morganic out of his difficulties; but it led to no material result; merely inflicting new injuries on certain spars that were sufficiently damaged before, and killing ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... offered his services as aide-de-camp to our then hero of great ambition and small capacity, La Fayette, who declined the honour. The Jacobins were not so nice. In 1792, they appointed him a general under Dumouriez, who baptized him his Ajax. This modern Ajax, having obtained a separate command, attacked Treves in a most ignorant manner, and was worsted with great loss. The official reports of our revolutionary generals have long been admired for their modesty as well as veracity; but Beurnonville has almost outdone them all, not excepting ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... pulse like wine, He melts me like the wind of spice, Strong as strong Ajax' red right hand, And grand ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... the actions of those horses, Ajax," remarked Mr. Dinsmore, as he came out putting on his gloves; "I did not intend to have them put in harness to-day. Why did you not give us the ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley

... rejoice, foolish Kallias? rather bid me weep that a descendant of Ajax should be capable of laying his well-won fame thus ignominiously at a tyrant's feet! No! I swear by Athene, by Father Zeus, and by Apollo, that I will sooner starve in foreign lands than take one step homeward, so long as the Pisistratidae ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... considered as the principal leader in the cohort of the suburbs. He was, I suppose, thirteen or fourteen years old, finely made, tall, blue-eyed, with long fair hair, the very picture of a youthful Goth. This lad was always first in the charge, and last in the retreat—the Achilles at once and Ajax of the Cross-causeway. He was too formidable to us not to have a cognomen, and, like that of a knight of old, it was taken from the most remarkable part of his dress, being a pair of old green livery breeches, which was the principal part of his clothing; ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... hisses the voice of the "small" impenitent snake. And the republican Ajax angrily lets the communistic Thersites fall to the ground, and blurts out in a deep-throated voice the fearful words: "You carry the ridiculous too far, ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... speaking in the midst of Troy's flames, or see Ulysses, in the fulness of all Calypso's delights, bewail his absence from barren and beggarly Ithaca. Anger, the Stoics say, was a short madness; let but Sophocles bring you Ajax on a stage, killing and whipping sheep and oxen, thinking them the army of Greeks, with their chieftains Agamemnon and Menelaus, and tell me if you have not a more familiar insight into anger, than finding in the schoolmen his genus and difference. See whether ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... You and she are both of age. Consider the late Mr. Ajax of Greece—he defied the lightning and got away with it! They can't do more than excommunicate you with bell and book ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... fellows, faithful to his friends, loyal to his king; and we know Finn as a fair old man of ruddy countenance, a lover of women, somewhat pompous and somewhat quarrelsome; but neither hero is a clear-cut personality like Sigurd or Ajax. If either Cuchulain or Finn were surely a god we should accept his deeds as now we cannot accept them, and were either brought home to us as wholly human and divested of his supernatural powers, and given a personality, we should be far ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... the Mimetic dances common to both Greeks and Romans were The Loves of Adonis and Venus, the Exploits of Ajax, the Adventures of Apollo, the Rape of Ganymede, the Loves of Jupiter and Danae, the Birth of Jupiter, Hector, the Rape of Europa, the Labours of Hercules, Hercules Mad, the Graces, Saturn devouring his Children, the Cybele in honour of Cybele, ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... are full of them," said Harrowby, "marching to defy death and springing to meet glory—marching not walking. Young Mars and Ajax and young Paris with Helen in his eyes. She might be some youngster's Helen! Why do you hope her ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... should appear either over vain or talkative. For, as Homer says, "from his lips flowed discourse sweeter than honey," for which sweet breath he wanted no bodily strength. And yet, after all, the famous leader of the Greeks nowhere wishes to have ten men like Ajax, but like Nestor: if he could get them, he feels no doubt of ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... floated over Richmond last summer. Was there not the hero's own testimony to that effect, rendered before the War Committee, months ago, wherein, with a chivalrous generosity, he ceased not to exalt himself on the ruined reputation of his late commander? Even as Ajax prayed for light, the people cried aloud for one week of fair weather: no more was wanted to crush and utterly confound the hopes of Rebels, Copperheads, and perfidious Albion. Every illustrated journal was crowded with portraits, of Fighting Joe and his famous white charger; it was ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... a fine horse, kind and sound, and I wouldn't part with him for anything, if the other one hadn't died. I had a horse called Ajax, that I got of one of the professors down to the college, and the next one I bought I called Bjax. But now that Ajax is gone, there don't seem to be no sense to the name. When I had Ajax, Bjax was all right; ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan

... is the basis of the Greek sculptured art of the highest period. Much of the argument of Lessing's elaborate essay on the "Laocoon" is aimed at this point, which is brought out in its completeness in his discussion of Timomachus' treatment of the raving Ajax. "Ajax was not represented at the moment when, raging among the herds he captures and slays goats and oxen, mistaking them for men. The master showed him sitting weary after these crazy deeds of heroism, and meditating self-destruction. ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... their swords on the ground, first on the right side, then on the left: at last at it they went with incredible ferocity. Words cannot tell the prodigies of strength and valor displayed in this direful encounter,—an encounter compared to which the far-famed battles of Ajax with Hector, of AEneas with Turnus, Orlando with Rodomont, Guy of Warwick with Colbrand the Dane, or of that renowned Welsh knight, Sir Owen of the Mountains, with the giant Guylon, were all gentle ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... Ormuzd is present in all light; but he is not the sun or moon itself In these the Persians venerate only the light, which is Ormuzd." [159] In fact, we owe to the Persians a valuable testimony to the God in whom is no darkness at all. "The prayer of Ajax was for light"; and we too little feel the Fire which burns and shines ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... being of gigantic mould, was cast for Hercules, and Frank Elliott for Ajax. When Patty told the girls that Kenneth Harper could do trick riding on a bicycle, they unanimously voted to invite him to ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells

... twelve years now on FitzGerald,—it is fifty-four years since he wrote those words: God send their dark forebodings may prove false! But they clouded his life, and were partly the cause why, Ajax-like, he loitered ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome

... from Spithead on 15 September in his old flagship the "Victory," accompanied by the "Euryalus," Captain Blackwood, one of the swiftest and smartest frigates in the navy. Picking up the battleships "Thunderer" and "Ajax" on the way, he joined the fleet ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... wail of Andromache, still we see all Troy toppling from her foundations, and the battling of Ajax, and Hector, bound to the horses, dragged under the city's crown of towers, through the Muse of Maeonides, the poet with whom no one country adorns herself as her own, but the ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... and yet of unsubduable "silent rage" (which has brooked even the vocal rage of Friedrich, on occasion); a really curious old Hussar General. He is now a kind of mythical or demigod personage among the Prussians; and was then (1779), and ever after the Seven-Years War, regarded popularly as their Ajax (with a dash of the Ulysses superadded),—Seidlitz, another Horse General, being the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Appendix - Frederick The Great—A Day with Friedrich.—(23d July, 1779.) • Thomas Carlyle

... His shade should be in feasts a guest, Whose form was in the strife a tower! What time our ships the Trojan fired, Thine arm to Greece the safety gave— The prize to which thy soul aspired, The crafty wrested from the brave.[3] Peace to thine ever-holy rest— Not thine to fall before the foe! Ajax alone laid Ajax low: ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... row of pretty girls occupied one side to make the ava (kava). The highest chief present was a magnificent man, as high chiefs usually are; I find I cannot describe him; his face is full of shrewdness and authority; his figure like Ajax; his name Auilua. He took the head of the building and put Belle on his right hand. Fanny was called first for the ava (kava). Our names were called in English style, the high-chief wife of Mr. St—(an unpronounceable something); Mrs. Straw, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the Reformation, an Italian patriot who was above provincial partialities, a poet who still lives in the hearts of his country, and who is shielded from oblivion by more generations than there were hides in the sevenfold shield of Ajax—if this was not a great man, many who are so called must bear the title unworthily. He was a faithful friend, and a devoted lover, and appears to have been one of the most fascinating beings that ever existed. Even when his failings were admitted, it must still be said that even his failings leaned ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... Epigrams, no larger than the last, which he composed almost entirely while he was in the bath. These are all his poetical compositions for though he begun a tragedy with great zest, becoming dissatisfied with the style, he obliterated the whole; and his friends saying to him, "What is your Ajax doing?" he answered, "My Ajax has ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... for he walked into the War Department of this nation at a time when it is probable no other man in it, could have done the work there which freedom demanded in her hour of peril, for this young man was none other than Edwin M. Stanton, the Ajax of ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... of rusty bars into the inner sanctum, at once, study, counting-house, library, and general receptacle of odds and ends connected with his calling. Here and there, to complete the jumble, were plaster casts of Shakspeare, Achilles, Ajax, and Napoleon, suggestive of the presidency of literature over the materialism of commerce which marked the career of this singular being. By dint of great industry he began to flourish in business, and, at one time, could make a profit of L20 a-day without moving from his seat. During this prosperous ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... at all, we shall not be so badly off as I was in the old 'Ajax,'" ejaculated Summers. "We were always obliged to wear her, and if we could get her round upon the other tack without running more than three miles to leeward we considered we ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... depends in the most obvious way, not on the labour of compositors, but on the quality of the directions which the author imposes on this labour through his manuscript—the author's mind being typical of directive ability generally. And what has Mr. Hillquit—the intellectual Ajax of the socialists—got to say about this? "Whether a book," he says, "is a work of genius or mere rubbish will largely affect its literary or artistic value; but it will have very little bearing on its economic or commercial value." This, he goes on to argue, will, despite all my objections, ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... made him ambitious. Having vanquished with the sword, he tried the pen. "You may grant the freedom of the city to your barbarians," said a wit to him one day, "but not to your solecisms." Undeterred he began a tragedy entitled "Ajax," and discovering his incompetence, gave it up. "And what has become of Ajax?" a parasite asked. "Ajax threw himself on a sponge," replied Augustus, whose father, it is to be regretted, did not do likewise. Nevertheless, it were pleasant to ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... regions, he found among the heroes that perished at Troy, his competitor, Ajax, who, when the arms of Achilles were adjudged to Ulysses, died by his own hand in the madness of disappointment. He still appeared to resent, as on earth, his loss and disgrace, Ulysses endeavoured to pacify him with praises and submission; but Ajax walked away without ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... The Ajax is almost a duplicate of the last dredger designed by Mr. Ferris for levee building on Roberts Island, with such modifications and improvements as have suggested themselves in the two years it has ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various

... queen to elope with him. Though demanded back by all the princes who had sworn to protect her, and threatened with the vengeance of the combined forces of Greece, he persisted in refusing their request. His father, on account of Ajax carrying off his sister Hesione, encouraged him in his obstinacy and guilt. In consequence of this outrage, the Greeks immediately commenced hostilities, which ended in the total destruction of the city and kingdom ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... wait till I the issue learn, If red or black the gods will favor most, Or yonder Ajax will the phalanx turn, Struggling to heave some rock against ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... Ajax drawing nearer, his sword fell from his hand and Alfred fell on the broom corn, an object of abject fear. Ajax grabbed him by the nape of the neck and seat of his uniform, nearly ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... attendants on justice, and if the sun in heaven should transgress his path they would punish him. The poets related that stone walls and iron swords and leathern thongs had an occult sympathy with the wrongs of their owners; that the belt which Ajax gave Hector dragged the Trojan hero over the field at the wheels of the car of Achilles, and the sword which Hector gave Ajax was that on whose point Ajax fell. They recorded that when the Thasians erected ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the book containing them was published in 1797, conjointly with other verses by Coleridge and Charles Lloyd. "We came into our first battle" (Charles says in his dedication to Coleridge, in 1818) "under cover of the greater Ajax." In this volume Lloyd's verses took precedence of Lamb's, at Coleridge's suggestion. This suggestion, the reason of which is not very obvious, was very readily acceded to, Lamb having a sincere regard for Lloyd, who (with a fine reasoning mind) was subject to that sad ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall

... physiognomy. It is probable, also, that the likeness of every hero of tragedy was handed down in statues, medals, and paintings, or even in a series of masks; and that the countenance of Theseus, or of Ajax, was as well known to the spectators as the face of any of their contemporaries. Whenever a living character was introduced by name, as Cleon or Socrates, in the old comedy, we may suppose that the mask was a striking, although not a flattering ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various

... in Ajax. His arrogance, which was punished with a degrading madness, is atoned for by the deep shame which at length drives him even to self-murder. The persecution of the unfortunate man must not, however, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... transition; but I know not how, from some fault in the author, the translator, or the reader, the pious Aeneas did not so forcibly seize on my imagination; and I derived more pleasure from Ovid's Metamorphoses, especially in the fall of Phaeton, and the speeches of Ajax and Ulysses. My grand-father's flight unlocked the door of a tolerable library; and I turned over many English pages of poetry and romance, of history and travels. Where a title attracted my eye, without fear or ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... where by guttering candles and to the sound of squeaking fiddles they gave their lurid play of the night, and they played to a crowded house. Elsewhere there was gambling, elsewhere praying, elsewhere braggarts spoke of Ajax exploits, elsewhere there was moaning and tossing in the hospitals, elsewhere some private, raised above the heads of his fellows, read aloud the Northern papers. McClellan has one hundred and twelve thousand men. Yesterday ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... deliberate pause, made a reply to it; the only instance, I believe, in the whole course of his life, when he condescended to oppose any thing that was written against him[923]. I suppose when he thought of any of his little antagonists, he was ever justly aware of the high sentiment of Ajax ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... the translation of the twelfth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, because it contains, among other things, the causes, the beginning, and ending, of the Trojan war. Here I ought in reason to have stopp'd; but the speeches of Ajax and Ulysses lying next in my way, I could not balk 'em. When I had compass'd them, I was so taken with the former part of the fifteenth book, (which is the masterpiece of the whole Metamorphoses,) that I enjoin'd myself the pleasing task of ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... sinking deep in the rich velvet carpet. On the first landing was a piece of sculptured marble of inestimable worth, seen in the soft warm light that sifted through a great pictorial stained-glass window overhead, the subject representing Ajax and Ulysses contending for the armour of Achilles. To the left of this, at the top of another flight leading to the library, was hung a fine full-length portrait of John Burkett Ryder. The ceilings here as in the lower hall were richly ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein

... so transpose the classical writers as to give, not the literal translation word for word, but what is really the modern equivalent. Let me give an odd sample or two to show what I mean. Take the passage in the First Book of Homer that describes Ajax the Greek dashing into the battle in front of Troy. Here is the way it runs (as nearly as I remember), in the usual word for word translation of the classroom, as done by the very best professor, his spectacles glittering with the ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock

... irreclaimable savages and barbarians. How often have I heard these sentiments fall from the plump and thoughtless squire, and from the thriving English shopkeeper, who has never felt the rod of an Orange master upon his back. Ireland a millstone about your neck! Why is it not a stone of Ajax in your hand? I agree with you most cordially that, governed as Ireland now is, it would be a vast accession of strength if the waves of the sea were to rise and engulf her to-morrow. At this moment, opposed as we are to all the world, the annihilation ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... nearer, his sword fell from his hand and Alfred fell on the broom corn, an object of abject fear. Ajax grabbed him by the nape of the neck and seat of his uniform, nearly ruining one ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... in which "the madman" scourges a ram he mistakes for Ulysses. His encounter with a flock of sheep, which he fancied in his madness to be the sons of Atreus, has been mentioned at greater or less length by several Greek and Roman poets. Don Quixote had a similar adventure. This Ajax is introduced by Shakespeare in his drama called Troilus and Cressida. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... this popular freebooter. Though Rob flourished in the '15, he was really a character very near Scott, whose friend Invernahyle had fought Rob with broadsword and target—a courteous combat like that between Ajax and Hector. ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... your nuptial chamber will you shun the deadly spears,... the hostile shout, and Ajax ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... same time to seek her in marriage, so that Tyndarus knew not what to do, seeing that, whomsoever he chose for his son-in-law, he would make thirty powerful enemies. The most famous among them were Ulysses, King of the island of Ithaca; Diomed, King of Aetolia; Ajax, King of Salamis, the bravest and strongest man in Greece; his brother Teucer; Philoctetes, the friend of Hercules; and Menelaus, King of Sparta. At last, as there was no other way of deciding among them, an entirely new idea occurred ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... their sister; Agamemnon ran away with her and palmed off a doe on Diana, in her place, so Homer tells how the Trojans and Parentines fought among themselves. Of course Agamemnon was victorious, and gave his daughter Iphigenia, to Achilles, for a wife: This caused Ajax to go mad, and he'll soon make the whole thing plain to you." The Homerists raised a shout, as soon as Trimalchio had done speaking, and, as the whole familia stepped back, a boiled calf with a helmet on its head was brought in on an enormous platter. Ajax followed and rushed ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... efficacy of prayer in faith, and on the seemingly miraculous effects which such "intending of the mind" upon religious and moral ideals may have upon character and happiness. Scientific faith, at present, takes it no further than the prayer which Ajax offered; but that ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... ages, and marks of each. With these, his companions of the chase, he was as carefully punctual in his attentions as to any other business of his life. Among the names of his horses were those of Chinkling, Valiant, Ajax, Magnolia, Blueskin, etc. Magnolia was a full-blooded Arabian, and was used for the saddle upon the road. Among the names of his hounds were Vulcan, Ringwood, Singer, Truelove, Music, Sweetlips, Forester, Rockwood, etc. It was his pride (and ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing



Words linked to "Ajax" :   mythical being



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