Ajax

Sophocles

Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 7: The Ajax. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1891.

  1. because the dark sword in his frenzied hand massacred the herds and the horse-guiding herdsmen.
Tecmessa
  1. Ah! Then it was from there, from there that he came to me with his captive flock!
  2. Of part, he cut the throats on the floor inside; some, striking their sides, he tore asunder. Then he caught up two white-footed rams and sheared off the head of one and its tongue-tip, and flung them away;
  3. the other he bound upright to a pillar, and seizing a heavy strap from a horse’s harness he flogged it with a whistling, doubled lash, while he cursed it with awful imprecations which a god, and no mortal, had taught him.
Chorus
  1. The time has come for each of us to veil his head and steal away on foot, or to sit and take on the swift yoke of rowing,
  2. giving her way to the sea-faring ship. So angry are the threats which the brother-kings, the sons of Atreus, speed against us! I fear to share in bitter death beneath an onslaught of stones,
  3. crushed at this man’s side, whom an untouchable fate holds in its grasp.
Tecmessa
  1. It grips him no longer. For like a southerly wind after it has started up sharply without bright lightning he grows calm. And now in his right mind he has new pain.