Aeneas as Inverted Ajax...

J. D. Noonan

University of South Florida

This paper, taken from a longer piece on the practice of calling certain Roman leaders *conservatores,* examines (or re-examines) Greek sources concerned with *sōtēria* and *eusebeia*.  Vergilian borrowings from Greek need not have focused only on accounts of Aeneas.  Other heroic figures help to define “piety” in Greek poetry, and some of them suggest that there is a link between piety and notions of “protecting” or “saving”.  Sophocles’ Ajax models one sort of connection between the two ideas.  In fact, the drama may contain the earliest extant Greek poetry in which the link is made explicit (as sources for this connection between the precise words and ideas Stesichorus and Lycophron are open to doubt).