In the name of the gods, be softened!AjaxYou have foolish hope, I think,if you plan so late to begin schooling my temper.Ajax is shut into the tent. Exit Tecmessa with Eurysaces.

ChorusO 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.

ChorusAnd 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 places