Ajax

Perseus Greek · Perseus Greek · 264 sections

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Son of Telamon, you who hold
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your throne on wave-washed Salamis near the open sea, when your fortune is fair, I rejoice with you. But whenever the stroke of Zeus, or the raging rumor of the Danaans with the clamor of their evil tongues attacks you, then I shrink with great fear and shudder in terror,
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like the fluttering eye of the winged dove. Just so with the passing of the night loud tumults oppressed us to our dishonor, telling how you visited the meadow wild with horses and destroyed
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the cattle of the Greeks, their spoil, prizes of the spear which had not yet been shared, how you killed them with flashing iron. Such are the whispered slanders that Odysseus moulds and breathes into the ears of all,
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and he wins much belief. For now he tells tales concerning you that easily win belief, and each hearer rejoices with spiteful scorn at your burdens more than he who told. Point your shaft at a noble spirit,
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and you could not miss; but if a man were to speak such things against me, he would win no belief. It is on the powerful that envy creeps. Yet the small without the great are a teetering tower of defence.
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For the lowly stand most upright and prosperous when allied with the great, and the great when served by less. But foolish men cannot learn good precepts in these matters beforehand. It is men of this sort that subject you to tumult, and
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we lack the power to repel these charges without you, O King. For when they have escaped your eye, they chatter like flocking birds. But, terrified by a mighty vulture,
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perhaps, if you should appear, they would quickly cower without voice in silence.
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Was it Artemis ruler of bulls, Zeus’s daughter, that drove you, O powerful Rumor, O mother of my shame,
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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 War
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have had some cause for anger arising out of an alliance of spears, and taken vengeance for the outrage by contrivance shrouded in night?
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For never of your own heart alone, son of Telamon, would you have gone so far down the sinister path
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as 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,
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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.
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Come now, up from your seat, wherever you are settled in this long-lived pause from battle
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and are making the flame of disaster blaze up to the sky! The violent insolence of your enemies rushes fearlessly about in the breezy glens, while the tongues of all the army cackle out a load of grief.
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For me, sorrow stands firmly planted.
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Mates of the ship of Ajax, offspring of the race that springs from the Erechtheids, the soil’s sons, cries of grief are the portion of us who care from afar for the house of Telamon.
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Ajax, our terrible, mighty lord of untamed power, now lies plagued by a turbid storm of disease.
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And what is the heavy change from the fortune of yesterday which this night has produced?
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Daughter of Teleutas the Phrygian, speak, since for you his spear-won mate bold Ajax maintains his love, so that with some knowledge you could suggest an explanation.
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Oh, how am I to tell a tale too terrible for words?
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Grave as death is the suffering which you will hear. By madness our glorious Ajax was seized in the night, and he has been subjected to utter disgrace. All this you may see inside his dwelling—butchered victims bathed in blood,
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sacrifices of no hand but his.
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What report of the fiery warrior have you revealed to us, unbearable, nor yet escapable—
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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 die
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because the dark sword in his frenzied hand massacred the herds and the horse-guiding herdsmen.
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Ah! Then it was from there, from there that he came to me with his captive flock!
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Of part, he cut the throats on the floor inside; some, striking their sides, he tore asunder. Then he caught up two white-footed rams and sheared off the head of one and its tongue-tip, and flung them away;
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the other he bound upright to a pillar, and seizing a heavy strap from a horse’s harness he flogged it with a whistling, doubled lash, while he cursed it with awful imprecations which a god, and no mortal, had taught him.
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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,
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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,
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crushed at this man’s side, whom an untouchable fate holds in its grasp.
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It grips him no longer. For like a southerly wind after it has started up sharply without bright lightning he grows calm. And now in his right mind he has new pain.
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To look on self-made suffering, when no other has had a hand in it—this induces sharp pains.
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But if he has stopped his madness, I have good hope that all may yet be well, since the trouble is of less account once it has passed.
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And which, if the choice were given you, would you choose—to distress your friends, and have joy yourself, or to share the grief of friends who grieve?
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The twofold sorrow, lady, is certainly the greater evil.
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Then we are ruined now, although the plague is past.
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What do you mean? I do not understand what you say.
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That man, while afflicted, found joy for himself in the dire fantasies that held him, though his presence distressed us who were sane. But now, since he has had pause and rest from the plague,
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he has been utterly subjected to lowly anguish, and we similarly grieve no less than before. Surely, then, these are two sorrows, instead of one?
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Indeed, I agree, and so I fear that a blow sent by a god has hit him. How could it be otherwise, if his spirit is no lighter
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than when he was plagued, now that he is released?
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This, you must know, is how matters stand.
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In what way did the plague first swoop down on him? Tell us who share your pain how it happened.
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You will hear all that took place, since you are involved.
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In the dead of night when the evening lamps were no longer aflame, he seized a two-edged sword and wanted to leave on an aimless foray. Then I admonished him and said, What are you doing, Ajax? Why do you set out unsummoned on this expedition,
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neither called by messenger, nor warned by trumpet? In fact the whole army is sleeping now. But he answered me curtly with that trite jingle: Woman, silence graces woman. And I, taking his meaning, desisted, but he rushed out alone.
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What happened out there, I cannot tell. But he came in with his captives hobbled together—bulls, herding dogs, and his fleecy quarry. Some he beheaded; of some he cut the twisted throat or broke the spine; others
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he abused in their bonds as though they were men, though falling only upon cattle. At last he darted out through the door, and dragged up words to speak to some shadow—now against the Atreidae, now about Odysseus—with many a mocking boast of all the abuse that in vengeance he had fully repaid them during his raid.
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After that he rushed back again into the house, and somehow by slow, painful steps he regained his reason. And as he scanned the room full of his disastrous madness, he struck his head and howled; he fell down, a wreck amid the wrecked corpses of the slaughtered sheep, and there he sat
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with clenched nails tightly clutching his hair. At first, and for a long while, he sat without a sound. But then he threatened me with those dreadful threats, if I did not declare all that had happened, and he demanded to know what on earth was the business he found himself in.
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And in my fear, friends, I told him all that had been done, as far as I knew it for certain. But he immediately groaned mournful groans, such as I had never heard from him before. For he had always taught that such wailing
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was for cowardly and low-hearted men. He used to grieve quietly without the sound of loud weeping, but instead moaned low like a bull. And now, prostrate in such miserable fortune, tasting no food, no drink,
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the man sits idly where he has fallen in the middle of the iron-slain cattle. And plainly he plans to do something terrible. Somehow his words and his laments say as much. Ah, my friends—for it was my errand to ask you this—come in and help him, if in any way you can.
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Men of his kind can be won over by the words of friends.
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Tecmessa, daughter of Teleutas, terrible is your news that our lord has been possessed by his sorrows.
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Oh! Ah, me! Ah, me!
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Soon there will be more sorrow, it seems. Did you not hear
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Ajax, did you not hear his resounding howl?
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Oh! Ah, me! Ah, me!
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The man seems to be sick, or else to be still pained by the disease which was recently with him, since he sees its traces.
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Oh my son, my son!
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Ah, miserable me! Eurysaces, it is for you he calls! What can his purpose be? Where are you? I am miserable!
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Teucer! Where is Teucer? Will his raid last for ever? While I perish?
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He seems to be sane—open the door!
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Perhaps merely at the sight of me he will come to a more respectable mood.
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There, it is open. Now you can look on this man’s deeds, and his true condition.
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Ah, good sailors, you alone of my friends
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who 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!
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Ah, lady, too true, it seems, was your testimony!
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The fact proves that he is not sane.
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Ah, you clan staunch in maritime skill, who embarked and stroked the oar-blade upon the brine, in you, in you alone
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I see a defense against suffering. Come, slay me on top of these!
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Hush! Speak words of better omen! Do not cure evil by prescribing evil; do not increase the anguish of your mad disaster.
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Do you see the bold, the strong of heart,
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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!
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Ajax, my lord, I beg you, do not talk this way!
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Away with you! Will you not take yourself outside!
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Ah, me! Ah, me!
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By the gods I plead, give way and acquire good sense!
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My rotten fortune!—I let slip from my grasp those men who were begging for punishment,
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and fell instead on cattle with twisted horns and fine goats, making their dark blood flow!
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Why grieve when the deed is past recall? These things can never be but as they are.
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Ah, you who spy out all things,
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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!
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It is at the god’s dispensation that every man both laughs and mourns.
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Yet if only I could see him, even shattered as I am!
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Oh! Oh!
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Make no big threats! Do you not see the trouble you are in?
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O Zeus, forefather of my forebears, if only I might destroy that deep dissembler, that hateful sneak, and
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the two brother-kings, and finally die myself, also!
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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?
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Ah, Darkness, my light!
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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,
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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?
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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!
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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!

Perseus Greek. CTS URN tlg0011.tlg003.perseus-eng2. Via the Perseus Digital Library / Open Greek and Latin TEI corpora. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source.