Ajax's laughter

Explanation

of those who laugh madly. For Ajax fell sick of madness when Odysseus was preferred to him for the arms of Achilles, and rushed sword in hand against the Greeks; turned, by the gods' providence, against the cattle, he slew them as if they were Achaeans. Seizing two great rams as if they were Agamemnon and Menelaus, he tied them up and flogged them, laughing madly all the while. Afterwards, recovering his senses, he killed himself.