Ajax
Sophocles
Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 7: The Ajax. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1891.
- What is it?
- Here is our Ajax—his blood newly shed, he lies folded around the sword, burying it.
- Ah, no! Our homecoming is lost! Ah, my king, you have killed me, the comrade of your voyage! Unhappy man—broken-hearted woman!
- His condition demands that we cry aiai.
- But by whose hand can the ill-fated man have contrived this end?
- He did it with his own hand; it is obvious. This sword which he planted in the ground and on which he fell convicts him.
- Ah, what blind folly I have displayed! All alone, then, you bled, unguarded by your friends! And I took no care, so entirely dull was I, so totally stupid. Where, where lies inflexible Ajax, whose name means anguish?
- No, he is not to be looked at! I will cover him over entirely with this enfolding shroud, since no one—no one, that is, who loves him—could bear to see him spurt the darkened gore of his self-inflicted slaughter up his nostrils and out of the bloody gash.