Tecmessa- Greek FigureMortal

Captive of Ajax

Tecmessa was a Phrygian princess, daughter of King Teleutas. During a Greek raid on the Phrygian lands allied with Troy, Ajax the Great killed her father and took Tecmessa as his war prize. She became Ajax's concubine and bore him a son, Eurysaces, named for his father's broad shield. In her own words to Ajax, she had been free and wealthy one night, a slave the next — and the gods and his strong hand had made it so. Her life and her child's life depended entirely on Ajax; without him, they faced enslavement at the hands of other Greek warriors.

The Death of Ajax

When Athena drives Ajax mad for his fury over losing Achilles's armor to Odysseus, he slaughters a flock of cattle believing them to be the Greek commanders who dishonored him. Tecmessa finds him sitting among the carcasses, blood-smeared and raving. When he regains his sanity and is consumed by shame, she pleads with him not to abandon her and their son — her father and homeland are gone, and he alone stands between her and slavery.

Ajax is unmoved. He deceives her with a speech that seems to promise reconciliation, then leaves the camp and falls on his sword. Tecmessa discovers the body and covers it with her cloak. She guards the corpse fiercely, refusing to let it be dishonored, and when Ajax's half-brother Teucer arrives, she shows him what remains.

The dispute that follows — Agamemnon and Menelaus seeking to deny Ajax proper burial — finds Tecmessa and Eurysaces stationed beside the body throughout, the child placed at his father's side as a supplicant. Odysseus intervenes, arguing that even an enemy deserves burial. The body is laid to rest, but Tecmessa's fate beyond this point goes unrecorded. Ajax, in his final moments, had entrusted his great shield to Eurysaces through Teucer's guardianship — the child's inheritance from a father who chose death over shame.