They have laid on us a load too hard to bear.

Yet such the plague wherewith the daughter dire

Of Zeus afflicts us for Odysseus’ sake.

Yea, how the patient hero must exult

In his dark soul and mock

With fiendish laughter at our frenzied grief;

And the two chiefs withal,

The Atridae, when they learn his fate.

Well, let them laugh and mock at Ajax fall’n.

It may be, though they missed him not in life,

When comes the stress of war they’ll mourn him dead.

Men of mean judgment know not the good thing

They have and hold till they have squandered it.

He by his death more sorrow gave to me

Than joy to them; to himself ’twas pure content,

For all he yearned to attain he won himself⁠—

Death that he chose. Then wherefore scoff at him?

The gods were authors of his death, not they.

So let Odysseus, if it please him, vent

Vain taunts; for them there is no Ajax more,

And dying he has left me naught but woe.

Woe, woe is me!

Hist, hist! methinks ’tis Teucer’s voice I hear,