Ajax

1Chorus Was it Artemis ruler of bulls, Zeus’s daughter, that drove you, O powerful Rumor, O mother of my shame,drove you against the herds of all our people? Was she exacting retribution, perhaps, for a victory that had paid her no tribute, whether it was because she had been cheated of the glory of captured arms, or because a stag had been slain without gifts for recompense? Or can the bronze-cuirassed Lord of Warhave had some cause for anger arising out of an alliance of spears, and taken vengeance for the outrage by contrivance shrouded in night?

1Chorus For never of your own heart alone, son of Telamon, would you have gone so far down the sinister pathas to fall upon the flocks. When the gods send madness, it cannot but reach its target, but may Zeus and Phoebus avert the evil rumor of the Greeks! And if it is the great kings who slander you with their furtive stories,or if it is he born of the abject line of Sisyphus, do not, my king, do not win me an evil name by keeping your face still hidden in the tent by the sea.

1Chorus What report of the fiery warrior have you revealed to us, unbearable, nor yet escapable—a report which the great Danaans propound, which their powerful storytelling spreads! Ah, me, I shudder at the future’s advancing step. In public view the man will diebecause the dark sword in his frenzied hand massacred the herds and the horse-guiding herdsmen.

1Chorus The time has come for each of us to veil his head and steal away on foot, or to sit and take on the swift yoke of rowing,giving her way to the sea-faring ship. So angry are the threats which the brother-kings, the sons of Atreus, speed against us! I fear to share in bitter death beneath an onslaught of stones,crushed at this man’s side, whom an untouchable fate holds in its grasp.

1Ajax is discovered sitting amidst the slaughtered cattle. Ajax Ah, good sailors, you alone of my friendswho alone still abide by the true bond of friendship, see how great a wave has just now crested over and broken around me, set on by a murderous storm! Chorus Ah, lady, too true, it seems, was your testimony!The fact proves that he is not sane.

1Ajax Ah, you clan staunch in maritime skill, who embarked and stroked the oar-blade upon the brine, in you, in you aloneI see a defense against suffering. Come, slay me on top of these! Chorus Hush! Speak words of better omen! Do not cure evil by prescribing evil; do not increase the anguish of your mad disaster.

2Ajax Do you see the bold, the strong of heart,the dauntless in battles with the enemy—do you see me now, terrible in the force of my hands against beasts unformidable? Oh, the mockery! How I have been violated! Tecmessa Ajax, my lord, I beg you, do not talk this way! Ajax Away with you! Will you not take yourself outside!Ah, me! Ah, me! Chorus By the gods I plead, give way and acquire good sense! Ajax My rotten fortune!—I let slip from my grasp those men who were begging for punishment,and fell instead on cattle with twisted horns and fine goats, making their dark blood flow! Chorus Why grieve when the deed is past recall? These things can never be but as they are.

2Ajax Ah, you who spy out all things,you ready tool of every crime, ah, son of Laertes, you filthiest sneak in all the army, I am sure you laugh loud and long for joy! Chorus It is at the god’s dispensation that every man both laughs and mourns. Ajax Yet if only I could see him, even shattered as I am!Oh! Oh! Chorus Make no big threats! Do you not see the trouble you are in? Ajax O Zeus, forefather of my forebears, if only I might destroy that deep dissembler, that hateful sneak, andthe two brother-kings, and finally die myself, also! Tecmessa When you make that prayer, pray at the same time for me that I, too, may die. What reason is there for me to live when you are dead?

3Ajax Ah, Darkness, my light!O Gloom of the underworld, to my eyes brightest-shining, take me, take me to dwell with you—yes, take me. I am no longer worthy to look for help to the race of the gods,or for any good from men, creatures of a day. No, the daughter of Zeus, the valiant goddess, abuses me to my destruction. Where, then, can a man flee? Where can I go to find rest?If my past achievements go to ruin, my friends, along with such victims as these near me, and if I am inclined to foolish plunderings, then with sword driven by both hands all the army would murder me! Tecmessa Ah, what misery for me that a valuable man should speak words of a sort which he would never before now have endured to speak!

3Ajax Ah! You paths of the sounding sea, you tidal caves and wooded pastures by the shore, long, long, too long indeedhave you detained me here at Troy. But no more will you hold me, no more so long as I have the breath of life. Of that much let sane men be sure. O neighboring streams of Scamander,kindly to the Greeks, no more shall you look on Ajax, whose equal in the army—here I will boast— Troy has never seen come from the land of Hellas. But now deprived of honor I lie low here in the dust! Chorus In truth I do not know how to restrain you, nor how to let you speak further, when you have fallen on such harsh troubles.

1Chorus O famous Salamis, you, I know, have your happy seat among the waves that beat your shore, eternally conspicuous in the eyes of all men.But I, miserable, have long been delayed here, still making my bed through countless months in the camp on the fields of Ida.I am worn by time and with anxious expectation still of a journey to Hades the abhorred, the unseen.

1Chorus And now a new struggle awaits me, ah, me!—a match withAjax, hard to cure, sharing his tent with a madness of divine origin. It is he whom mighty in bold war you dispatched from you once far in the past. But now he is changed; he grazes his thoughts in isolated placesand has been found a heavy sorrow for his friends. His hands’ former achievements, deeds of prowess supreme,have fallen without friends, without friends, before the unfriendly, miserable Atreidae.

2Chorus Surely his mother, companion of antiquity andgrey with age, when she hears that he has been afflicted with the ruin of his mind will raise a loud cry of wailing. It is not the nightingale’s piteous lamentthat she, unhappy, will sing. Rather in shrill-toned odes the dirge will rise, while the hollow sound of beating hands and the shredding of grey hair will fall upon her breast.

2Chorus Yes, better hid in Hades is the man plagued by foolishness, who by the lineage from where he springs is noblest of the enduring Achaeans, yet now isconstant no more in his inbred temperament, but wanders outside himself. O Telamon, unhappy father, how heavy a curse upon your son awaits your hearing, a curse which never yet hasany life-portion of the heirs of Aeacus nourished but his!

1Chorus I shiver with rapture; I soar on the wings of sudden joy!O Pan, O Pan, appear to us, sea-rover, from the stony ridge of snow-beaten Cyllene. King, dancemaker for the gods, come, so that joining with us you may set on the Nysian and the Cnosian steps,your self-taught dances. Now I want to dance. And may Apollo, lord of Delos, step over the Icarian seaand join me in his divine form, in eternal benevolence!

1Chorus Ares has dispelled the cloud of fierce trouble from our eyes. Joy, joy! Now, Zeus, now can the white radiance of prosperous days approachour swift, sea-speeding ships, since Ajax forgets his pain anew, and has instead fully performed all prescribed sacrifices to the gods with worship and strict observance. The strong years make all things fade.And so I would not say that anything was beyond belief, when beyond our hopes, Ajax has been converted from his fury and mighty struggles against the Atreidae.

1Chorus Who, then, can guide me? What toilingfisherman, busy about his sleepless hunt, what nymph of the Olympian heights or of the streams that flow toward Bosporus, can say whether she has anywhere seen the wanderings of fierce-hearted Ajax? It is cruel that I, who have roamed with such great toil, cannot come near him with a fair course,but fail to see where the enfeebled man is. Enter Tecmessa near the corpse of Ajax. Tecmessa Ah, me, ah, me! Chorus Whose cry broke from that nearby grove? Tecmessa Ah, misery! Chorus There, I see his unfortunate young bride, who was the prize of his spear,Tecmessa, dissolved in that pitiful wailing. Tecmessa I am lost, destroyed, razed to the ground, my friends! Chorus What is it? Tecmessa Here is our Ajax—his blood newly shed, he lies folded around the sword, burying it. Chorus Ah, no! Our homecoming is lost! Ah, my king, you have killed me, the comrade of your voyage! Unhappy man—broken-hearted woman! Tecmessa His condition demands that we cry aiai. Chorus But by whose hand can the ill-fated man have contrived this end? Tecmessa He did it with his own hand; it is obvious. This sword which he planted in the ground and on which he fell convicts him. Chorus Ah, what blind folly I have displayed! All alone, then, you bled, unguarded by your friends! And I took no care, so entirely dull was I, so totally stupid. Where, where lies inflexible Ajax, whose name means anguish? Tecmessa No, he is not to be looked at! I will cover him over entirely with this enfolding shroud, since no one—no one, that is, who loves him—could bear to see him spurt the darkened gore of his self-inflicted slaughter up his nostrils and out of the bloody gash. Ah, what shall I do? What loved one is there to lift you in his arms? Where is Teucer? How timely would be his arrival, if he would but come to compose the corpse of his brother here! Ah, unlucky Ajax, from so great a height you are fallen so low!Even among your enemies you are worthy of mourning!

1Chorus You were bound, poor man, with that unbending heart you were bound, it seems, to fulfill a harsh destiny of limitless toils! So wild to my earswere the words of hatred which in your fierce mood you moaned against the Atreidae with such deadly passion. True it is that that moment was a potent source of sorrows,when the arms were made the prize for a contest in the skills of warfare! Tecmessa Ah! Ah! Chorus True anguish, I know, pierces your heart. Tecmessa Ah! Ah, me! Chorus I do not wonder, lady, that you wail and wail again, when you have just lost one so loved. Tecmessa It is for you to analyze my troubles, but for me to feel them too fully. Chorus I must agree. Tecmessa Oh, my son, to what a heavy yoke of slaverywe advance! What cruel task-masters stand over us! Chorus Ah, the deeds of the two ruthless Atreidae which you name in our present grief would be unthinkable! May the gods hold them back! Tecmessa These events that you see would not have happened as they have without the will of the gods. Chorus Yes, they have brought upon us a burden too heavy to bear. Tecmessa Yet what suffering the divine daughter of Zeus, fierce Pallas, engenders for Odysseus’ sake! Chorus No doubt the much-enduring hero exults in his dark soul and mocks in loud laughter at these frenzied sorrows—what shame!—and with him, when they hear the news, will laugh the royal brothers, the Atreidae.

1168Enter Tecmessa and Eurysaces. Teucer And now just in time his son and his wife approachto arrange the burial of the pitiable corpse. Come here, nephew. Take your place near him, and grasp in supplication your father, your begetter. Kneel and pray for help, with locks of hair in your hand from me, her, and thirdly you;they are the suppliant’s only resource. But if any soldier from the army should tear you by violence from this body, then for his wickedness may he be wickedly cast out of his country and get no burial, but be severed at the root with all his race, just as I shear this lock.Take it, Nephew, and keep it safe. Let no one move you, but kneel there and cling to the dead. And you there, do not stand idly by like women, not men. Help defend us until I return, when I have seen to a grave for him, though all the world forbids it. Exit Teucer.

1Chorus Which will be the last year? When will the sum of the years of our many wanderings stop bringing upon me the unending doom of toilful spear-battlesthroughout broad Troy, the cause of sorrow and of shame for Greece?

1Chorus If only that man had first passed into the depths of the sky or into Hades, the common home of all,before he taught the Greeks the shared plague of Ares’ detested arms! Ah, those toils of his invention, which produced so many more toils! Look how that man has ravaged humanity!

2Chorus No delight in garlandsor deep wine-cups did that man provide me, no sweet din of flutes, that miserable man, or pleasing rest in the night.And from love—god!—from love he has totally barred me. Here I lie uncared for, while heavy dews constantly wet my hair,damp reminders of joyless Troy.

2Chorus In the past bold Ajax was always my bulwark against night’s terrors and flying missiles. But now he has become an offering consecratedto a malignant divinity. What joy, then, what delight awaits me anymore? O to be where the wooded wave-washed cape fences off the deep sea,to be beneath Sunium’s jutting plateau, so that we might salute sacred Athens!