Kitap 10
31.1
If you turn your gaze again to the upper part of the painting, you see, next to Actaeon, Ajax of Salamis, and also Palamedes and Thersites playing with dice, the invention of Palamedes; the other Ajax is looking at them as they play. The color of the latter Ajax is like that of a shipwrecked sailor with the brine still rough on the surface of his skin.
31.2
Polygnotus has intentionally gathered into one group the enemies of Odysseus. Ajax, son of Oileus, conceived a hatred of Odysseus, because Odysseus urged the Greeks to stone him for the outrage on Cassandra. Palamedes, as I know from reading the epic poem Cypria, was drowned when he put out to catch fish, and his murderers were Diomedes and Odysseus.
31.3
Meleager, the son of Oeneus, is higher up in the picture than Ajax, the son of Oileus, and he seems to be looking at Ajax. Palamedes has no beard, but the others have. As to the death of Meleager, HomerHom. Il. 1.566 says that the Fury heard the curses of Althaea, and that this was the cause of Meleager's death. But the poem Eoeae, as it is called, and the Minyad agree in giving a different account. For these poems say that Apollo helped the Curetes against the Aetolians, and that Meleager was killed by Apollo.
31.4
The story about the brand, how it was given by the Fates to Althaea, how Meleager was not to die before the brand was consumed by fire, and how Althaea burnt it up in a passion—this story was first made the subject of a drama by Phrynichus, the son of Polyphradmon, in his Pleuronian Women:—For chill doomHe escaped not, but a swift flame consumed him,As the brand was destroyed by his terrible mother, contriver of evil.Polyphradmon, Pleuronian Women, unknown location.However, it appears that Phrynichus did not elaborate the story as a man would his own invention, but only touched on it as one already in the mouths of everybody in Greece.
