damp reminders of joyless Troy.

ChorusIn 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!

Enter Teucer.TeucerHere I am! I hurried back when I saw the supreme commander, Agamemnon, rapidly approaching.It is plain to me that he will let his clumsy tongue fly.Enter Agamemnon.AgamemnonSo it is you, they tell me, who dared open your mouth wide to make fierce threats against us—and are you still unpunished? Yes, I mean you—you, the captive slave’s son. No doubt if you were born from a noble mother,your talk would reach the sky and you would proudly strut about, when now it is the case that, though you are a nobody and a nothing, you have stood up for this other nothing lying here, and have vowed that we came out with no authority either as admirals or as generals to rule the Greeks or you. No, as an autonomous ruler, you say, Ajax set sail.