Ajax
Sophocles
Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 7: The Ajax. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1891.
- Ah, what misery for me that a valuable man should speak words of a sort which he would never before now have endured to speak!
- Ah! You paths of the sounding sea, you tidal caves and wooded pastures by the shore, long, long, too long indeed
- have you detained me here at Troy. But no more will you hold me, no more so long as I have the breath of life. Of that much let sane men be sure. O neighboring streams of Scamander,
- kindly to the Greeks, no more shall you look on Ajax, whose equal in the army—here I will boast—
- Troy has never seen come from the land of Hellas. But now deprived of honor I lie low here in the dust!
- In truth I do not know how to restrain you, nor how to let you speak further, when you have fallen on such harsh troubles.
- Aiai! Who would ever have thought that my name would so descriptively suit my troubles? For well now may Ajax cry Aiai—yes, twice and three times. Such are the harsh troubles with which I have met. Look, I am one whose father’s
- prowess won him the fairest prize of all the army, whose father brought every glory home from this same land of Ida; but I, his son, who came after him to this same ground of Troy with no less might and proved the service of my hand in no meaner deeds,