were to hear such a thing, for one who can use force to punish by words. TEU. Crawl hence now, for in me too is it most base to listen to a trifler that prates unmeaning words. CHо. The conflict of a mighty quarrel will ensue. But speeding, Teucer, as best thou canst, be quick to look out a hollow grave for Ajax, where he shall possess his mouldering sepulchre by mortals unforgotten. i TEU. Nay more, here at hand are in very season the wife and child of this my brother, to deck out the tomb of the unfortunate dead. Come hither, my boy, and standing near, as a suppliant, touch thy father that begot thee. And sit thou his petitioner, holding in thy hands my hair, and her's here, and thine own the third, a suitor's wealth. But if any one from the army would pluck thee forcibly from this corpse, be the villain, as a villain should, an unburied outcast from his country, mowed down root and branch with all his race, even thus as I cut this lock of hair. Take Sophocles has said nothing of the body of Ajax being burnt, that being a privilege denied to him on the authority of Calchas, who declared the holy element of fire to be polluted by consuming therein the remains of suicides. Philostratus in Heroicis. i The custom of consecrating their hair was very common among the ancients; and, in Euripides, we find Electra condemning Helen for sparing her locks. Orestes, L. 128. So also Achilles, at the funeral of Patroclus, cuts off the hair he had vowed to his native river Spercheius, and his example was followed, out of respect to the dead, by the other Greeks. II. XXIII. 135. it, my child, and keep it, nor let any move thee, but having fallen on the body cling fast. And do not ye stand close by him as women instead of men, but protect him until I come, having taken order for the burial of Ajax, though none permit. CHO. What then will be the last? in how long will close the tale of fast fleeting [or wide wandering] years, that ever brings upon me the ceaseless grievance of warlike toils along the dank Troy, the dire reproach of Greeks? Would that that man had first entered the boundless æther, or Hades, our universal home, who shewed the Greeks the common use in war of hateful arms. Ah, toils, of toils the parents! For he was man's ruin. He hath appointed me to company neither with the joy of chaplets, nor of deep goblets, nor the dulcet harmony of flutes, the wretch, nor to linger o'er the nightly luxury of love; no, from love, alas, he has debarred me. And thus uncared-for I am lying, my hair continually 'drenched with fast-falling dews, memorials of doleful Troy. And truly up to this time the valiant Ajax was my bulwark from "nightly terror, and the arrow [by day;] but now he is given up to a detestable fiend; what delight then, what pleasure will * Still finer are the reflections of Henry VI. upon the evils of war, as the causes which produce them are more dreadful, and truly warrant his exclaiming, "Woe upon woe, grief more than common grief!" 1 Similar to this is the complaint of the herald in the Agamemnon of Eschylus. This passage bears a striking resemblance to a verse in the ninety-first Psalm. ever again attend me? "O could I be where beetles o'er the main the headland chafed by the wave under Sunium's lofty plain, that I might accost the sacred Athens! TEU. Truly I hurried back, having seen the commander Agamemnon hastening hither to us: and he evidently is about to let loose his evil tongue on me. AGAMEMNON. They tell me thou darest vaunt against us thy fierce invectives thus with impunity; thee, to thee, son of the captured slave, I speak. Truly hadst thou been born of a noble mother, thou wouldst have boasted loftily, and walked on tip-toe, when, thyself a nothing, for one that is nothing thou hast stood up against us. On oath too hast thou affirmed that we have come neither generals nor admirals of the Greeks or of thee; no, as thou sayest, [i. e. by thy account,] Ajax sailed his own commander. Are not these great insults to hear from slaves? In behalf of what manner of man hast thou clamoured thus haughtily? whither having marched, where made his stand, where I did not? n It was probably from these lines that Lord Byron took the hint for the last stanza of his ode to the Greek isles : "Place me on Sunium's marbled steep, "Shamest thou not, knowing whence thou art extraught, To let thy tongue detect thy base-born heart?" THIRD PART OF HENRY VI. Act 2, s. 2. Have then the Greeks no men save him? Of bitter consequence methinks was the contest I proclaimed of late to the Greeks for Achilles' arms, if every where I am to be made out a villain by Teucer; and if it will never content you, not even when worsted, to acquiesce in what the majority of your judges willed, but ye will constantly either assail us somewhere with reproaches, or harass us with covert treason, you, the vanquished party. Yet out of ways like these there never could arise the establishment of any law, if we are to thrust out those who prevail justly, and bring the hindmost to the foremost rank, no, all this must we check. For 'tis not the man of ample size, nor of muscular frame that has the surest footing, no, the men of good counsel every where prevail. And the large-sided ox goes straight along the road guided by a whip, though small. And on thee I behold this medicine quickly stealing, unless thou get thee some understanding, thou who for a man now no more, but already a shadow, art confident in insolence and in tongue unbridled. Wilt thou never be humble? wilt thou not, having learnt what by birth thou art, bring hither some one else of gentle blood, who in thy stead shall speak to us thy words? P Ulysses, in Shakespeare, thus remarks on the false pride of Ajax and Achilles : "So that the ram, that batters down the wall, For the great swing and rudeness of his poise, They place before the hand that made the engine, Or those that with the fineness of their souls, By reason guide his execution." TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, Act 1, sc. 3. for I can no longer understand while thou speakest, since I am not acquainted with the barbarians' tongue. CHO. O that ye had both of you the sense to be temperate, for than this I have nothing better to advise you. TEU. Alas! how speedily does all grateful memory of the dead fade away among mankind, and is found to have deserted him; if at least this man no longer, not even in trifling matters, Ajax, remembers thee, for whom thou many a time didst toil with the spear, exposing thy life! But all this is now past and gone, thrown by in scorn. O thou that hast just uttered words many and profitless, rememberest thou no longer aught, when Ajax here once came and alone delivered you, 'pent up within your barriers, already as nothing in the rout of battle; when fire was blazing around the ships, even then on the topmost benches of the seamen; and Hector, past the trenches, was leaping high upon the naval hulks! Who repelled all this? Was it not he that did it ?-he, who, thou sayest, no Agamemnon sneers at Teucer for his descent from a foreign mother; wherein Sophocles appears rather to have consulted the manners and prejudices of his own age than that which he is describing. Not unlike this taunt is Hotspur's observation to Glendower : "Who shall say me nay? GLEN. Why, that will I. Hor. Let me not understand you then, Speak it in Welsh." FIRST PART OF HENRY IV. Act 3, sc. 1. See Homer, Il. 12, for the account of Ajax' repulse of Hector, and in the 14th book we find a disgraceful flight by night proposed by Agamemnon, but objected to by Ulysses. |