Achilles, not Ajax, is the Person Addressed by Ulysses in Ennius, fr. 313 Ribbeck3

What is it about?

This paper argues that Ennius most likely referred to Achilles by the patronymic Aeacides, ‘descendant of Aeacus (Achilles’ grandfather)’ when identifying the person to whom Ulysses addressed the words quoted from an Ennian tragedy at Cic. Rosc. Am. 90: Quis ibi non est vulneratus ferro Phrygio? (‘Who has not been wounded there by Trojan steel?’). A 7th(?)- cent. scholiast sets the scene by telling us that the speaker was the wounded Ulysses, who had left the fighting to bring word to Achilles of the danger posed to the Greek ships by Hector and the Trojans (Schol. Gronov. D, pp. 311-12St). The trouble is, the scholiast goes on to state that Ulysses spoke those words in response to a question put to him by Ajax, who should have had no part in the scene since he was still in the thick of the fighting, holding off Hector and the Trojans. If Ennius wrote the vocative ‘Aeacida’, and especially if the text in front of the scholiast adopted the spelling ‘Aiacida’, it is easy to see how the scholiast could have mistaken this for the name Aiax, Aiacis (Ajax).

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