Locrians
The Locrians are said to have arrived in southern Greece in the late 2nd millennium BC from their homeland on Pindus, when the Greek tribes moved southwards.
The Ozolian Locrians, who are said to have been a colony of the former, are not mentioned in history until the time of the Peloponnesian War, and are even then represented as a semi-barbarous people.
In his History of Rome, Livy includes the Locri and other Greek cities among the defectors during the Punic Wars, even though they had initially opposed Hannibal in 216 BC.
Their city was expected to be open to the Carthagenians, and their alliance was based on mutual commitment for support during peace and war.
Elements of Ajax worship have been found in Euboea, Pontus, the Aegean islands, Asia Minor, Peloponnesus, Kerkyra, Epirus, southern Italy, and northern Africa; which means that the Locrian civilization was widely extended in the ancient Greek world.
Locrian women became the vehicles for the transmission of status, and marriage maintained the social order of a traditional oligarchy.
On the other side, Ajax's actions resulted in his death according to Greek mythology, while the Locrian tribe suffered from the anger of the gods.
According to Lycophron, in his work Alexandra, for this crime of their national hero, the Locrians had to send two unmarried maidens to the temple of Athena at Ilion of Athens for 1,000 years, where they should live until they died.
The goddess is referred to as "Athena Ilias", a name not necessarily derived from Ilion, but maybe from the family deity Oileus, the father of Ajax and the ancestral hero of the Locrians.
Callimachus mentions that the curse fell upon Locris three years after the Trojan war, which led to the beginning of the tribute at the command of the Delphic oracle.
Locrian maidens had the appearance of a Greek mourner, as they went to Ilion barefoot, wearing only one garment and their hair was loose or cut.
Locrian maidens were seen as marginal beings and scapegoats, separated from normal life, a feature of rites of passage.
The three stages of rites of passage are separation, marginalization and reincorporation, and according to this, the maidens left for Ilion, spent a year there and returned home.
