Eksodos
Teucer
Here I am! I hurried back when I saw the supreme commander, Agamemnon, rapidly approaching.
It is plain to me that he will let his clumsy tongue fly.
1225
Agamemnon
So it is you, they tell me, who dared open your mouth wide to make fierce threats
against us—and are you still unpunished? Yes, I mean you—you, the captive
slave’s son. No doubt if you were born from a noble mother,
your talk would reach the sky and you would proudly strut about, when now it is the case that, though you are a nobody and a nothing, you have stood up for this other nothing lying here, and have vowed that we came out with no authority either as admirals or as generals to rule the Greeks or you. No, as an autonomous ruler, you say, Ajax set sail.
1230
Does it not shame me that I hear these proud words from slavish mouths? What was the man whom you shout about with such arrogance? Where did he advance, or where did he stand his ground, where I did not do the same? Have the Greeks, then, no other men but him? To our own harm, it seems, we announced
1235
to the Greeks the contests for the arms of Achilles, if on all sides we are accounted corrupt because of Teucer, and if it will never satisfy you Salaminians, even when you are defeated, to accept the verdict which satisfied the majority of the judges. But instead you will always no doubt aim your slanderous arrows at us,
1240
or treacherously lash at our backs when you fall behind us in the race.
Yet in a place where such ways prevail, there could be no settled order for any law, if we are to thrust the rightful winners aside and bring those in the rear up to the front ranks.
1245
These tendencies must be checked. It is not the stout, broad-shouldered men that are the steadiest allies. No, it is the wise who prevail in every engagement. A broad-backed ox is kept straight on the road all the same when only a small whip directs him.
1250
And a dose of this very medicine, I foresee, will find you before long, unless you gain a little good sense. He no longer exists, but is already a shade, yet still you boldly insult us and give your tongue too much freedom. Restrain yourself, I say. Recall your birth, your nature.
1255
Bring someone else here—a man who is freeborn—who can plead your cause before me in your place. For when you speak, I no longer understand— I do not know your barbarian language.
1260
Chorus
If only you both had the sense to exercise self-restraint!
There is no better advice that I could give you two.
1265
Teucer
My, how quickly gratitude to the dead seeps away from men and is found to have turned to betrayal, since this man no longer offers even the slightest praise in remembrance of you, Ajax, even though it was for his sake
you toiled so often in battle, offering your own life to the spear! No, your assistance is dead and gone, all flung aside!
Full and foolish talker, do you no longer remember anything of the time when you were trapped inside your defenses,
1270
when you were all but destroyed in the turn of the battle and he, he alone came and
saved you at the moment when the flames were already blazing around the
decks at your ships’ sterns and Hector was leaping high over the trench
towards the vessels?
1275
Who averted that? Was it not Ajax who did it, the one who, you say, nowhere set foot
where you were not? Well, do you grant that he did his duty to you there?
And what about when another time, all alone, he confronted Hector in single
combat according to the fall of the lots, and not at anyone’s command?
1280
The lot which he cast in was not the kind to flee the challenge; it was no lump of moist earth, but one which would be the first to leap lightly from the crested helmet! It was this man who did those deeds, and I, the slave, the son of the barbarian mother, was at his side.
1285
Pitiful creature, how can you be so blind as to argue the way you do? Are you not aware
of the fact that your father’s father Pelops long ago was a barbarian, a
Phrygian? That Atreus, your own begetter, set before his brother a most
unholy feast made from the flesh of his brother’s children?
1290
And you yourself were born from a Cretan mother, whose father found a stranger straddling her and who was consigned by him to be prey for the mute fish. So being of such a kind, can you reproach a man like me for my lineage? I am the son of Telamon,
1295
who won my mother for his consort as prize for valor supreme in the army. And she was
the daughter of Laomedon, of royal blood, and it was as the flower of the
spoil that Alcmena’s son gave her to Telamon. Thus nobly born as I am from
two noble parents,
1300
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.
1305
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
1310
that you had been more timid than bold when confronting me.
1315
Chorus
Lord Odysseus, you arrive at the right time, if mediation, not division, is your purpose in coming.
Odysseus
What is the trouble, friends? From far off I heard shouting from the Atreidae over this
brave man’s corpse.
Agamemnon
Is it not because we, Lord Odysseus, have long had to hear the worst, most shameful language from this man?
1320
Odysseus
How so? I can pardon a man a retaliatory barrage of abuse if another has insulted him.
Agamemnon
I insulted him, since his conduct toward me was of the same stripe.
Odysseus
And what did he do that harmed you?
1325
Agamemnon
He declares that he will not leave this corpse without due burial, but will entomb it in spite of me.
