Ajax
Sophocles
Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 7: The Ajax. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1891.
- could I disgrace my own flesh and blood, whom even as he lies here subdued by such massive troubles, you, making your pronouncements without a blush of shame, would thrust out without burial? Now consider this well: wherever you cast him away, with him you will also cast our three corpses.
- It is right for me to die before all men’s eyes while I am toiling in his cause, rather than for your wife—or should I say your brother’s? With this in mind, then, look not to my safety, but to yours instead, since if you cause me any grief at all, you will soon wish
- that you had been more timid than bold when confronting me.
- Lord Odysseus, you arrive at the right time, if mediation, not division, is your purpose in coming.
- What is the trouble, friends? From far off I heard shouting from the Atreidae over this brave man’s corpse.
- Is it not because we, Lord Odysseus, have long had to hear the worst, most shameful language from this man?
- How so? I can pardon a man a retaliatory barrage of abuse if another has insulted him.
- I insulted him, since his conduct toward me was of the same stripe.