Ajax the Great War perhaps occurred at the height of the Mycenaean civilization (see discussion of Troy VII), roughly the point at which this palace appears to have been abandoned. Ajax the Great Ajax or Aias ( or ; Greek , gen. "Aiantos"; archaic ) is a mythological Greek hero, the son of King Telamon and Periboea, and the half-brother of Teucer. He plays an important role, and is portrayed as a towering figure and a warrior of great courage in Homer's "Iliad" and in the Epic Cycle, a series of epic poems about the Trojan War. He is also referred to as
Greek hero cult heroines as similar in kind to heroes, but in androcentric Greek culture, typically of lesser stature. Whitley distinguishes four or five essential types of hero cult: Hero cults could be of the utmost political importance. When Cleisthenes divided the Athenians into new demes for voting, he consulted Delphi on what heroes he should name each division after. According to Herodotus, the Spartans attributed their conquest of Arcadia to their theft of the bones of Orestes from the Arcadian town of Tegea. Heroes in myth often had close but conflicted relationships with the gods. Thus Heracles's name means "the glory of