Stasimon 5
[Episode]
Toil follows toil yielding toil! Where, where have I not trudged? And still no place can say that I have shared its secret.
First Semichorus
Listen! A sudden thud!
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Second Semichorus
We made it, we shipmates of your voyage.
Semichorus 1
What news, then?
Semichorus 2
All the westward flank of the ships has been scoured for tracks.
Semichorus 1
And did you find anything?
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Semichorus 2
Only an abundance of toil. There was nothing more to see.
Semichorus 1
Neither, as a matter of fact, has the man been seen along the path that faces the shafts of the morning sun.
[Choral 1]
Who, then, can guide me? What toiling
Chorus
fisherman, busy about his sleepless hunt, what nymph of the Olympian heights or of the streams that flow toward
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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,
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but fail to see where the enfeebled man is.
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Chorus
Whose cry broke from that nearby grove?
Chorus
There, I see his unfortunate young bride, who was the prize of his spear,
Tecmessa, dissolved in that pitiful wailing.
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Tecmessa
I am lost, destroyed, razed to the ground, my friends!
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!
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Tecmessa
His condition demands that we cry aiai.
Chorus
But by whose hand can the ill-fated man have contrived this end?
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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.
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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!
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Even among your enemies you are worthy of mourning!
Chorus
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 ears
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were 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,
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when the arms were made the prize for a contest in the skills of warfare!
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Chorus
True anguish, I know, pierces your heart.
Chorus
I do not wonder, lady, that you wail and wail again, when you have just lost one so loved.
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Tecmessa
It is for you to analyze my troubles, but for me to feel them too fully.
Tecmessa
Oh, my son, to what a heavy yoke of slavery
we advance! What cruel task-masters stand over us!
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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.
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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!—
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and with him, when they hear the news, will laugh the royal brothers, the Atreidae.
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