Oh once more to stand, where on the wooded headland The ocean is breaking, under The shadow of Sunium's height; thence could I greet from far The divine city of Athens.
(TEUCER enters, followed by AGAMEMNON and his retinue.)TEUCER
In haste I come; for the captain of the host, Agamemnon, I have seen hurrying hither.
To a perverse tongue now will he give rein.
AGAMEMNON
Is it you, they tell me, have dared to stretch your lips In savage raillery against us, unpunished?
'Tis you I mean, the captive woman's son.
Verily of well-born mother had you been bred, Superb had been your boasts and high your strut, Since you, being nought, have championed one who is nought, Vowing that no authority is ours By sea or land to rule the Greeks or you.
Are not these monstrous taunts to hear from slaves?
What was this man whose praise you vaunt so loudly?
Whither went he, or where stood he, where I was not?
Among the Greeks are there no men but he?
In evil hour, it seems, did we proclaim The contest for Achilles' panoply, If come what may Teucer is to call us knaves, And if you never will consent, though worsted, To accept the award that seemed just to most judges, But either must keep pelting us with foul words, Or stab us craftily in your rage at losing.
Where such discords are customary, never Could any law be stablished and maintained, If we should thrust the rightful winners by, And bring the rearmost to the foremost place.
But such wrong must be checked. 'Tis not the big Broad-shouldered men on whom we most rely;No, 'tis the wise who are masters everywhere.
An ox, however large of rib, may yet Be kept straight on the road by a little whip.
And this corrective, I perceive, will soon Descend on you, unless you acquire some wisdom, Who, though this man is dead, a mere shade now, Can wag your insolent lips so freely and boldly.
Come to your senses: think what you are by birth.
Bring hither someone else, a man born free, Who in your stead may plead your cause before us.
For when you speak, the sense escapes me quite:
I comprehend not your barbarian tongue.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS
Would that you both might learn wisdom and temperance.
There is no better counsel I can give you.
TEUCER
Alas! how soon gratitude to the dead Proves treacherous and vanishes from men's minds, If for thee, Ajax, this man has no more The least word of remembrance, he for whom oft Toiling in battle thou didst risk thy life.
But all that is forgotten and flung aside.
Thou who but now wast uttering so much folly, Hast thou no memory left, how in that hour When, pent within your lines, you were already No more than men of nought, routed in battle, He alone stood forth to save you, while the flames Were blazing round the stern-decks of the ships Already, and while Hector, leaping high Across the trench, charged down upon the hulls?
Who checked this ruin? Was it not he, who nowhere So much as stood beside thee, so thou sayest?
Would you deny he acted nobly there?
Or when again chosen by lot, unbidden, Alone in single combat he met Hector?
For no runaway's lot did he cast in, No lump of clammy earth, but such that first It should leap lightly from the crested helm?
His were these exploits; and beside him stood I the slave, the barbarian mother's son.
Wretch, with what face can you fling forth such taunts?
Know you not that of old your father's father Was Pelops, a barbarian, and a Phrygian?
That your sire Atreus set before his brother A feast most impious of his own children's flesh?
And from a Cretan mother you were born, Whom when her father found her with a paramour, He doomed her for dumb fishes to devour.
Being such, do you reproach me with my lineage?
Telamon is the father who begat me, Who, as the foremost champion of the Greeks, Won as his bride my mother, a princes By birth, Laomedon's daughter: a chosen spoil She had been given him by Alcmena's son.
Thus of two noble parents nobly born, How should I shame one of my blood, whom now, Laid low by such calamity, you would thrust Unburied forth, and feel no shame to say it?
But of this be sure: wheresoever you may cast him, Us three also with him will you cast forth.
For it beseems me in his cause to die In sight of all, rather than for the sake Of your wife-or your brother's should I say?
Look then not to my interest, but your own.
For if you assail me, you shall soon wish rather To have been a coward than too bold against me.
(ODYSSEUS enters.)
LEADER
In good time, King Odysseus, hast thou come, If 'tis thy purpose not to embroil but reconcile.
ODYSSEUS
What is it, friends? Far off I heard high words From the Atreidae over this hero's corpse.
AGAMEMNON
Royal Odysseus, but now from this man We have been listening to most shameful taunts.