> [[nagy-g]]. "How a Classical Homer occasionally downgrades the heroic glory of Ajax in order to save it: Part 1". Article in [[journal-classical-inquiries]]. > [CHS](https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/how-a-classical-homer-occasionally-downgrades-the-heroic-glory-of-ajax-in-order-to-save-it-part-1/#download) > [pdf](a/palaima2021-03-17.pdf) > §1.5. The very idea of Ajax and Achilles engaged in a game of dice is nowhere to be found, however, in the verbal art of epic as dated to the classical period, that is, in the poetry of our Homer. Why, then, is such an idea very much alive, as we have just seen, in the visual art of paintings that date back to the preclassical period? It could be supposed, at first sight, that the practice of gaming by way of throwing dice is incompatible with epic as epic, so that the preclassical picturing of Ajax and Achilles in the act of throwing dice in a board game could be viewed as an early innovation in visual art—an innovation that would be supposedly incompatible with the verbal art of epic, in all its seriousness as exemplified by our Homer’s Classical epic. And yet, I have reason to think that the very idea of such a game is dead serious. The die is cast here—or, to say it in the plural, dice are thrown—to determine who wins and who loses in an all-out competition where everything is suddenly at stake. Such competitions are actually compatible with the seriousness of epic—and they are in fact a most ancient aspect of **some other epic narratives that derive, like Greek, from poetic traditions that have been reconstructed as belonging to the overall language-family described as “Indo-European”** in historical linguistics. I cite here just one obvious example. In the cognate epic traditions of the _Mahābhārata,_ which is the oldest and largest epic of India (the canonical version contains about 100,000 lines of Sanskrit poetry), the playing of dice is at the core of the overall plot of the whole story. The hero Yudhiṣṭhira gambles away his kingship, all his possessions, and even his own self in a catastrophic dice game that is narrated in _Mahābhārata_ 2.53–70, as noted by Kevin McGrath ([2017](mcgrath2017.md):65n64) in his engaging book about Yudhiṣṭhira.