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Enter AGAMEMNON .
And so I hear thou’lt stretch thy mouth agape
With big bold words against us undismayed—
Thou, the she-captive’s offspring! High would scale
Thy voice, and pert would be thy strutting gait,
Were but thy mother noble; since, being naught,
So stiff thou stand’st for him who is nothing now,
1230
And swear’st we came not as commanders here
Of all the Achaean navy, nor of thee;
But Aias sailed, thou say’st, with absolute right.
Must we endure detraction from a slave?
What was the man thou noisest here so proudly?
1235
Have I not set my foot as firm and far?
Or stood his valour unaccompanied
In all this host? High cause have we to rue
That prize-encounter for Pelides’ arms,
Seeing Teucer’s sentence stamps our knavery
1240
For all to know it; and nought will serve but ye,
Being vanquished, kick at the award that passed
By voice of the majority in the court,
And either pelt us with rude calumnies,
Or stab at us, ye laggards! with base guile.
1245
Howbeit, these ways will never help to build
The wholesome order of established law,
If men shall hustle victors from their right,
And mix the hindmost rabble with the van.
That craves repression. Not by bulky size,
1250
Or shoulders’ breadth, the perfect man is known;
But wisdom gives chief power in all the world.
The ox hath a huge broadside, yet is held
Right in the furrow by a slender goad;
Which remedy, I perceive, will pass ere long
1255
To visit thee, unless thy wisdom grow;
Who hast uttered forth such daring insolence
For the pale shadow of a vanished man.
Learn modestly to know thy place and birth,
And bring with thee some freeborn advocate
1260
To plead thy cause before us in thy room.
I understand not in the barbarous tongue,
And all thy talk sounds nonsense to mine ear.
And so I hear thou’lt stretch thy mouth agape
With big bold words against us undismayed—
Thou, the she-captive’s offspring! High would scale
Thy voice, and pert would be thy strutting gait,
Were but thy mother noble; since, being naught,
So stiff thou stand’st for him who is nothing now,
1230
And swear’st we came not as commanders here
Of all the Achaean navy, nor of thee;
But Aias sailed, thou say’st, with absolute right.
Must we endure detraction from a slave?
What was the man thou noisest here so proudly?
1235
Have I not set my foot as firm and far?
Or stood his valour unaccompanied
In all this host? High cause have we to rue
That prize-encounter for Pelides’ arms,
Seeing Teucer’s sentence stamps our knavery
1240
For all to know it; and nought will serve but ye,
Being vanquished, kick at the award that passed
By voice of the majority in the court,
And either pelt us with rude calumnies,
Or stab at us, ye laggards! with base guile.
1245
Howbeit, these ways will never help to build
The wholesome order of established law,
If men shall hustle victors from their right,
And mix the hindmost rabble with the van.
That craves repression. Not by bulky size,
1250
Or shoulders’ breadth, the perfect man is known;
But wisdom gives chief power in all the world.
The ox hath a huge broadside, yet is held
Right in the furrow by a slender goad;
Which remedy, I perceive, will pass ere long
1255
To visit thee, unless thy wisdom grow;
Who hast uttered forth such daring insolence
For the pale shadow of a vanished man.
Learn modestly to know thy place and birth,
And bring with thee some freeborn advocate
1260
To plead thy cause before us in thy room.
I understand not in the barbarous tongue,
And all thy talk sounds nonsense to mine ear.
Ajax. Sophocles. Lewis Campbell (Translator). London, New York and Toronto. 1906.