Poetry. Translated from the Greek by John Tipton. Written in the fifth century B.C., Sophocles' tragedy concerns the shame and death of Ajax, a Greek who had won fame for his prodigious strength in the Trojan War. A brutal farewell to the valor and values of the heroic world, the play moves through a series of reversals: old allies become enemies, honor becomes disgrace, and divine power becomes temporal authority. Formally terse, this translation conveys the force and urgency of Sophocles' Greek. Indeed, as Tipton suggests in his afterword, the tragedy has renewed relevance for our times: "AJAX demands our attention, not only for its clear-eyed account of the bitter aftermath of victory but also for its treatment of unscrupulous politics." With a foreword by Stanley Lombardo.

Sophocles (c. 496 BCE-406 BCE) was the second of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus and earlier than those of Euripides. According to the Suda, a 10th century encyclopedia, Sophocles wrote 123 plays during the course of his life, but only seven have survived in a complete form: Ajax, Antigone, Trachinian Women, Oedipus the King, Electra, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus.