The connections between Sophocles'Aïas and Pindar's poems for athletes of Aigina are studied from the perspective of the Athenian and "tragic" staging of the hero Aïas, that the Theban poet celebrated very differently. The paper then addresses the meaning of the adjective τραγικός, "tragic", and its application to heroes (with reference to the scholia and to an often neglected passage from Plato's Phaedo).