There is a famous struggle that emerges 
out of mythological tradition after Achilles is killed tragically. 
he has these heroic arms. They're divine. 
Whoever has them is going to have an impenetrable, except for that who's 
healed, an impenetrable shield around them. 
So, of course, these are hot property and the Greek heroes think, each of them, 
thinks they should have the arms of Achilles. 
Well, the two that emerge as the best best candidates to get the arms of 
Achilles are Ajax and Odysseus known as Ulysses in our treatment here. 
So, we have Ajax versus Ulysses. And famously in the tradition, 
the two of them have a verbal battle. they have a verbal struggle over who 
should have the arms. each of them gives a speech that says why 
they should be the one that gets the arms of Achilles. 
Rather than focus on any of their own good qualities, they mention their own 
good qualities, but they usually just, they mostly just in the tradition 
criticize the other person. So, Ajax will say nasty things about 
Ulysses and Ulysses will say nasty things about Ajax. 
In the version that Ovid gives us Ajax's opening statement talks about Ulysses 
doing the night raid, a famously nasty bit of work that Ulysses did in in the 
Iliad book 11. we talked about how Ulysses faked madness 
in order to dodge the draft. That's true. 
He tried to avoid going to Troy by faking the madness. 
We hear about Philoctetes, who is a warrior who was wounded on the way to 
Troy. and gets this, has this awful condition 
that is so nasty it makes all the all the other Greek warriors disgusted. 
So, they have to kind of nastily get rid of Philoctetes and they just stow him off 
on an island and let him kind of rot on his own. 
well, Ulysses is the one that spearheads that little nasty business as well. 
He's a crafty talker and a liar Ajax says. 
And he's parasitical on Diomedes, this other great warrior who Ajax says does 
all the hard fighting. Then Odysseus jumps in and says, well he 
certainly diffuses this issue of himself as a crafty talker. 
He says please don't hold it against me that I can speak well as long as, and I 
hope that you don't hold it against Ajax that he's really stupid. 
jumps into to some nastiness right off the bat. 
We have a flattering opening, and he's especially careful to flatter Agamemnon 
throughout the speech. So, as a good rhetorician, he makes sure 
his audience likes him. And then, he recounts all his own 
victories and successes and talks about how stupid Ajax is. 
That's Odeysseus' whole speech. And Ovid spends a lot of time in his 
treatment of the Trojan War dealing with these two arguing back and forth talking 
about each other. Well, the nastiness here is this kind of, 
there's in the end here, a kind of victory of chattering over heroism. 
These two are saying in a rhetorical debate, that's not as glorious as a 
debate using marshal weapons of arms, they're on the same side so it has a kind 
of aspect of civil war to it. Where has the glory gone? as we saw in 
our earlier lecture, Ovid is kind of taking the, the typical glorious moments 
out of this story and instead, focusing on inglorious ones and in the case here 
of a famous one of taking Ajax and Ulysses taking the stuffing out of each 
other saying nasty things about one another, running each other down in order 
to try to get the arms of Achilles for themselves. 
this story is not always so quite so negative in valance, Ovid has really 
quite made it like that so the two really run each other down. 
it's also, I think, probably significant for us to point out one quick footnote on 
the education system in Ovid's time. Remember, we talked about him as having 
great training to be a good spokesman and wonderfully skilled in the verbal arts. 
This is a way to get ahead in his time its equivalent to what contemporary 
lawyers training would be. So, Ovid has gotten this great training. 
Well, one of the ways, one of the standard ways that people practiced, in 
their education system in ancient Rome practiced and sharpened their verbal arts 
was to take set pieces from ancient mythology and then produce them up on 
stage for their peers. And the set pieces they take would be 
where one character from mythology would argue against another and those arguments 
would be kind of nasty verbal back and forths against each other. 
so, Ovid surely must have seen many times and probably himself participated in lots 
of arguments of Ajax and Achilles and arguments with Ajax and Ulysses over the 
arms of Achilles. he knew this as an exercise as a school 
boy and here, he is putting it in his epic in a way that I think is meant to 
reflect back for the Romans to reflect back on themselves. 
He has presented mythic poetry as if it's a school boy's exercise. 
Well, guess what, that's exactly how his teachers used it 
in the training that he got as a lawyer. this grand mythological tradition with 
all of its heroism has been reformulated and repackaged into a tight little 
discrete school boy exercise to train you up in verbal arts, to rip down your 
friend, who is also your countryman who happens to be your opponent in some 
political or legal battle. its a wonderfully subtle satirical move 
on Ovid's part. It shows his careful satirical eye, 
his, his, his savage wit and his brilliant skill at bringing those two 
things together.