than Oedipus Tyrannus". Lloyd-Jones considers various lines that have been taken by critics interpreting the play, and finds that some consider that the Greek gods are being portrayed by Sophocles as just, and that when Ajax suffers it is a learning-experience for the character and the audience. Other interpretations of the play, according to Lloyd-Jones, instead consider that Ajax is being portrayed heroically in defiance of the unjust and capricious gods. Lloyd-Jones, notes that Ajax’s murderous intentions in this play are not softened by the playwright, and the difficult aspects of his character are fully depicted, but in spite of that Sophocles shows profound sympathy for the greatness of Ajax, and appreciation for the bravery in Ajax’s realization that suicide is the only choice – if he is to maintain his conception of honor and his sense of self. In another interpretation, Robert Bagg and James Scully point out that the play is composed in two distinct parts; the first part is steeped in the old world, a world of kings and heroes, and the second part resembles more the democratic world of Sophocles’ Greece, and is marked by an imperfect debate of contending ideas. Bagg and Scully consider that the play, with its two parts, may be seen as an important epoch-spanning work that raises complex questions, including: How does 5th-century Greece advance from the old world into the new? Especially considering that Greece, in its stories and thoughts, clings and reveres the old world? And while clinging to the past, Greece considers that its new, democratic order is important and vital. As Bagg and Scully contend, Ajax, with his brute force has been a great warrior-hero of the old world, but the Trojan war itself has changed and become a quagmire; what’s needed now is a warrior who is intelligent – someone like Odysseus. Ultimately, according to Bagg and Scully’s interpretation, Ajax must still be respected, and the end of the play demonstrates respect and human decency with the promise of a proper burial. John Moore interprets the play as primarily a character study of Ajax, who, when he first appears covered in the blood of the animals that he in his madness has killed, presents an image of total degradation; the true action of the play, according to Moore, is how this image is transformed from degradation, as Ajax recovers his heroic power and humanity. The play,