Dimensions
135 x 203 x 9mm
AIAS is not a tragedy in the usual sense. Aias, the last great Homeric warrior in the heroic mode, has become obsolete. The armor of the dead Achilles that should have been awarded to him has gone instead to the resourceful Odysseus. Aias sets out in the night to kill the Greek commanders and Odysseus, whom he feels have cheated him, but Athena deludes him. He ends up killing and torturing the animals that are the Greek army's war spoil. Coming to his senses, seeing what he has done, he kills himself, effectively ending the era of bigger-than-life Homeric heroes. His survivors, chief among them the 'barbarian' Tekmessa, who must count among the strongest and clear-seeing of all Greek heroines, and his half-brother Teukros, also a barbarian, are left to expose the bases of the heroic ethos and define the world they will now live in: the world and the desired ethos of fifth century Athens, what we call 'classical Greece.'
AIAS has particular contemporary resonance because of its treatment of what equates to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, social and civic healing, the raising of children, and more.
