I plunge this sword. Ye too I call to aid,

Maidens immortal, with immortal eyes

Beholding all the many woes of man,

Swift-footed hounds of vengeance, mark ye well

How by the Atridae I am all undone.

Swoop on them, Furies, blight and blast them both

In utter ruin, as they see me now!

On, ye Avengers, glut your maw, spare not,

Let ruin seize the whole Achaean host!

And thou whose chariot climbs the steep of heaven,

When in thy course thou see’st my father-land,

Draw in thy gold-bedizened rein and tell

My aged sire and mother of their son,

His sorrows and his end. Poor mother! when

She hears the tale, her piercing wail will ring

Through all the city. But how profitless

These idle lamentations and delay!

With such despatch as may be let’s to work.

O Death, Death, Death, draw nigh and look on me⁠—

Yet there below I shall have time enow

To converse face to face with Death. But thee,

O bright effulgence of this radiant day,

On thee, the Sun-god charioteer, I call

For the last time and never more again.

O light! O sacred soil of mine own land,

My Salamis! my home, my ancestral hearth!

O far-famed Athens, race akin to mine,

Ye Trojan springs and streams, ye plains of Troy,

Farewell, ye nurses of my fame, farewell!

This is the last word Ajax speaks to you.

Henceforth he talks in Hades with the dead.