Epeisodion 6
Teucer
what a full crop of sorrows you have sown for me in your death! Where can I go? What people will receive me, when I have failed to help you in your troubles? No doubt Telamon, your father and mine, will likely greet me with a smile and kind words,
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when I return without you. Yes, of course he will—a man who, even when enjoying good
fortune, tends not to smile more brightly than before! What will a man like
him leave unsaid? What insult will he forego against the bastard offspring
of his spear’s war-prize, against your cowardly, unmanly betrayer, dear
Ajax,
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or better yet, your treacherous betrayer with designs to govern your domain and your house after your death? So will he insult me; he is a man quick to anger, severe in old age, and his rage seeks quarrels without cause. And in the end I shall be thrust out of our land, and cast off,
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branded by his taunts as a slave instead of a freeman. These are my prospects at home. At Troy, on the other hand, my enemies are many, while I have few things to help me. All this have I gained from your death! Ah, me, what shall I do? How shall I draw your poor corpse
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off the sharp tooth of this gleaming sword, the murderer who, it seems, made you breathe your last? Now do you see how in time Hector, though dead, was to destroy you?
By the gods, note the fortune of this mortal pair.
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First Hector with the very warrior’s belt given to him by Ajax was lashed to the
chariot-rail and shredded without end, until his life fled with his breath.
Now Ajax here had this gift from Hector, and by this he has perished in his
deadly fall. Was it not the Fury who forged this blade,
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was not that belt the product of Hades, the grim artificer? I, for my part, would affirm that these happenings and all happenings ever are designed by the gods for men. But if there is anyone in whose judgment my words are unacceptable, let him cherish his own thoughts, as I do mine.
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Chorus
Do not go on at length, but consider how you will bury him and what you will next say. For I see our enemy approaching, and chances are that he comes to mock at our sorrows, like one who would do us harm.
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Teucer
What man of the army do you see?
Chorus
Menelaus, the beneficiary of this expedition.
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Teucer
I see him; he is not hard to recognize when near.
Menelaus
You there, I tell you not to lift that corpse for burial, but leave it where it lies.
Teucer
Why do you waste your breath on this arrogant command?
Menelaus
It conveys my decree, and the decree of the army’s supreme ruler.
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Teucer
Would you mind, then, telling me what reason you pretend?
Menelaus
This—that when we had hoped we were bringing Ajax from home to be an ally and a friend for the Greeks, we found him on closer examination to be an enemy worse than the Phrygians,
since he plotted the murder of the entire army and marched by night against us in order to take us with his spear. And if some god had not smothered this attempt, we would have been allotted the fate which he now has, and we would be dead and lie prostrate by an ignoble doom,
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while he would be living. But now a god has turned his outrage aside, so that it fell on the sheep and cattle.
For this reason there is no man so powerful that he will be able to entomb the corpse of Ajax. Instead he shall be cast forth somewhere on the yellow sand
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to become forage for the birds of the seashore. So then do not inflame the terrible force of your spirit. If we were unable to master him while he lived, in any case in death, at least, we shall rule him despite your opposition and control him by force of our hands. For while he lived, there never was a time
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when he would obey my commands.
Now it is, in truth, the mark of a base nature when a commoner does not think it right to obey those who stand over him. Never can the laws maintain a prosperous course in a city where fear has no fixed place,
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