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1264
Fie! How doth gratitude when men are dead
Prove renegade and swiftly pass away!
This Agamemnon hath no slightest word
Of kind remembrance any more for thee,
Aias, who oftentimes for his behoof
Hast jeoparded thy life in labour of war.
1270
Now all is clean forgotten and out of mind.
Thou who hast multiplied words void of sense,
Hast thou no faintest memory of the time
When who but Aias came and rescued you
Already locked within the toils,—all lost,
1275
The rout began: when close abaft the ships
The torches flared, and o’er the bootless trench
Hector was bounding high to board our fleet?
Who stayed that onset? Was not Aias he?
Whom thou deny’st to have once set foot by thine.
1280
Find ye no merit there? And once again
When he met Hector singly, man to man,
Not by your bidding, but the lottery’s choice,
His lot, that skulked not low adown i’ the heap,
A moist earth-clod, but sure to spring in air,
1285
And first to clear the plumy helmet’s brim.
Yes, Aias was the man, and I too there
Kept rank, the ‘barbarous mother’s servile son.’
I pity thee the blindness of that word.
1290
Who was thy father’s father? A barbarian,
1290
Pelops, the Phrygian, if you trace him far!
And what was Atreus, thine own father? One
Who served his brother with the abominable
Dire feast of his own flesh. And thou thyself
Cam’st from a Cretan mother, whom her sire
1295
Caught with a man who had no right in her
And gave dumb fishes the polluted prey.
Such was thy race. What is the race thou spurnest?
My father, Telamon, of all the host
Being foremost proved in valour, took as prize
1300
My mother for his mate: a princess she,
Born of Laomedon; Alcmena’s son
Gave her to grace him—a triumphant meed.
Thus royally descended and thus brave,
Shall I renounce the brother of my blood,
1305
Or suffer thee to thrust him in his woes
Far from all burial, shameless that thou art?
Be sure that, if ye cast him forth, ye’ll cast
Three bodies more beside him in one spot;
For nobler should I find it here to die
1310
In open quarrel for my kinsman’s weal,
Than for thy wife—or Menelaüs’, was ’t?
Consider then, not my case, but your own.
For if you harm me you will wish some day
To have been a coward rather than dare me.
1315
Fie! How doth gratitude when men are dead
Prove renegade and swiftly pass away!
This Agamemnon hath no slightest word
Of kind remembrance any more for thee,
Aias, who oftentimes for his behoof
Hast jeoparded thy life in labour of war.
1270
Now all is clean forgotten and out of mind.
Thou who hast multiplied words void of sense,
Hast thou no faintest memory of the time
When who but Aias came and rescued you
Already locked within the toils,—all lost,
1275
The rout began: when close abaft the ships
The torches flared, and o’er the bootless trench
Hector was bounding high to board our fleet?
Who stayed that onset? Was not Aias he?
Whom thou deny’st to have once set foot by thine.
1280
Find ye no merit there? And once again
When he met Hector singly, man to man,
Not by your bidding, but the lottery’s choice,
His lot, that skulked not low adown i’ the heap,
A moist earth-clod, but sure to spring in air,
1285
And first to clear the plumy helmet’s brim.
Yes, Aias was the man, and I too there
Kept rank, the ‘barbarous mother’s servile son.’
I pity thee the blindness of that word.
Who was thy father’s father? A barbarian,
1290
Pelops, the Phrygian, if you trace him far!
And what was Atreus, thine own father? One
Who served his brother with the abominable
Dire feast of his own flesh. And thou thyself
Cam’st from a Cretan mother, whom her sire
1295
Caught with a man who had no right in her
And gave dumb fishes the polluted prey.
Such was thy race. What is the race thou spurnest?
My father, Telamon, of all the host
Being foremost proved in valour, took as prize
1300
My mother for his mate: a princess she,
Born of Laomedon; Alcmena’s son
Gave her to grace him—a triumphant meed.
Thus royally descended and thus brave,
Shall I renounce the brother of my blood,
1305
Or suffer thee to thrust him in his woes
Far from all burial, shameless that thou art?
Be sure that, if ye cast him forth, ye’ll cast
Three bodies more beside him in one spot;
For nobler should I find it here to die
1310
In open quarrel for my kinsman’s weal,
Than for thy wife—or Menelaüs’, was ’t?
Consider then, not my case, but your own.
For if you harm me you will wish some day
To have been a coward rather than dare me.
1315
Ajax. Sophocles. Lewis Campbell (Translator). London, New York and Toronto. 1906.