Ajax

“I need your guidance now as much as ever.

Your hand has always steered me well.”

Athena delivers the play’s opening speech, telling Odysseus that she is always watching over him, “[d]evising ways to trap your enemies” (47). Her favorite hero is looking for her, asking for her guidance. His speech demonstrates his deference to the goddess and his willingness to subvert his will to hers. Odysseus is one of a select few heroes who survive the aftermath of the Trojan war. His survival is credited to his flexibility and piety. Both are expressed in the above passage, in which he seeks Athena’s counsel before acting and acknowledges his debt to her. His stance toward the goddess contrasts with Ajax’s in Line 117 (see quote three).

“But isn’t it satisfying to laugh at your enemy?”

Here, Athena prepares to call Ajax out from his tent and invites Odysseus to gloat at his misfortune. Athena’s motives and intentions have been a source of debate among scholars. In some cases laughter can be portrayed as a coping mechanism to defuse tension, but it can also tempt a hero into committing outrage (hybris). To laugh at others’ misfortune is unwise, since reversals of fortune make it possible that the one who laughs will become the one who is laughed at. It is possible that Athena is testing Odysseus.