red gash, the gore now blackened from his self-inflicted death-wound. Ah me, what shall I do? What friend will bear thee off? Where is Teucer? I trust that he

may come, if come he should, in time to help lay out for burial this his fallen brother! Ah luckless Ajax! what thou wert! what thou art! deserving to meet with mourning, aye, even from thy foes".

CH. Wretched man! thou wert then bent, at some time, to accomplish thine evil lot of endless woes: such words wouldst thou sigh out all night and day, stern heart, of evil sound to the Atridæ, with deadly passion. Surely that time was a chief source of troubles, when the contest of superior valour was proposed about Achilles' arms.

TEC. Ah me, me?

CH. The pang of genuine grief pierces to thine heart, I know.

TEC. Ah me, me!

CH. I can well believe thou sighest thus doubly, lady, but now despoiled of such a friend as this.

TEC. 'Tis thine to fancy all this, but mine too truly to feel.

CH. I confess it.

TEC. Ah me, my child, to what a yoke of slavery pass we! what taskmasters are over us!

i

CH. Alas! in this thy sorrow thou hast made mention of the unutterable deed of the two unfeeling Atridæ : but may heaven avert it.

And if thou tell'st the heavy story right,
Upon my soul, the hearers will shed tears;

Yea, e'en my foes will shed fast-falling tears,

And say-Alas! it was a piteous dǝed.

3d Pt. of Hen. VI. Act 1.

Musgrave proposes ἀναιδῶν, rejecting the interpretation of άναυδον by infandum.

TEC. Nay, all this had never stood as it does, but with heaven's will.

CH. But far too heavy is this burden they have brought upon us.

TEC. And yet such affliction as this does the dread goddess Pallas, child of Jove, gender, to gratify Ulysses.

CH. Aye, verily, the chief of many toils in his darkling soul mocks us with scorn, and laughs with abundant laughter at the madman's sorrows, alas! alas! and with him Atreus' two royal sons hearing them.

TEC. Then let them laugh and joy over the woes of Ajax. Perhaps, mark me! though when alive they desired him not, they will mourn him dead, in the needful time of battle. For the weak-minded, while they hold in their hands aught good, knew it not, ere some one have cast it from him. More bitter has his death been to me than sweet to them', but delightful to himself. For all that he longed to possess he gained for himself, the very death he wished. How then could they laugh out against him? By the gods he died, not by them",-no. Then let Ulysses, with empty [vaunts,]

* See Brunck's note.

For it so falls out,

That what we have we prize not to the worth,
Whiles we enjoy it: but being lacked and lost,
Why then we rack the value, then we find
The virtue that possession would not shew us
Whiles it was ours.

Much Ado about Nothing, Act 4. Sc. 1.

Mãov is understood. Thus Homer :

Βούλομ ̓ ἐγὼ λαὸν σόον ἔμηεναι, ἢ ἀπολέσθαι.

B. I. v. 117.

To fall by the hands of an enemy worthy of them, was often a con

be insolent: for they have Ajax no longer; no, but having bequeathed to me sorrows and lamentations, he is departed.

Ah me! me!

TEUCER.

CH. Be silent; for methinks I hear the voice of Teucer, crying out in a tone that intently dwells on this calamity.

TEU. O dearest Ajax! O person of my brother! hast thou then dealt with thyself even as report prevails?

CH. Teucer, the man is no more! of this be assured.

TEU. Then woe is me, for my heavy affliction!
CH. Since it is so-

TEU. Unhappy me! unhappy!

CH. 'Tis time to groan.

TEU. O deep and dire calamity!

CH. Too much so, Teucer.

TEU. Ah, hapless? But what of his child? Where in this Trojan land is he?

CH. Alone at the tents.

TEU. Wilt not thou with all speed bring him hither, lest any of his foes lay hold of him, as the whelp of a widowed lioness? Go, bestir thyself, bear aid. All, mark me! are wont to deride the fallen dead".

solation to the dying warriors, of antiquity, and is so used by Philoctetes to Neoptolemus, on his hearing of Achilles' death. Thus Turnus in Virgil:

Non me tua fervida terrent

Dicta, ferox: Dî me terrent, et Jupiter hostis.

En. XII. 894.

"Of this savage custom among the ancients, Homer has left us many

CH. Nay, moreover, while yet alive, O Teucer, the hero left a charge that thou shouldst care for Eurysaces, even as now thou art caring.

TEU. Oh thou, of all spectacles to me the most painful that I have ever with mine eyes beheld; thou too, a journey that of all journeys hast surely most anguished my heart, even that which I have now come, O dearest Ajax, when I heard thy fate, following up and tracing it step by step: for the report concerning thee, swift as if some god were the agent, pervaded all the Greek host, how that thou wert dead and gone. Which I miserable hearing, while I was absent from it, was inwardly groaning, but now that I see it, am utterly undone. Ah me! Come, uncover, that I may see the whole evil. O sight dreadful to look on, and of bitter daring, of how many pangs having deeply sown the seeds for me, dost thou wither! For whither can I betake myself, to what manner of people, I that nowhere aided thee in thy troubles? Doubtless will Telamon, thy father as he is mine, receive me with kind aspect, and, haply, with mild air, returning without thee. For how should he not, whose wont it is not, even when fortunate, to wear a smile of more than common pleasure? What will he suppress? What reproach will he not utter? That I, the spurious offspring of his captive in war P; that I have by cowardice and examples, and none more striking than in the case of the fallen Hector, which passage Pope has in his translation explained away. II. B. XXII. • Ironically.

P Teucer, as he himself afterwards states, was the son of Telamon by Hesione, daughter of Laomedon, who had been selected by Hercules as a reward to the king of Salamis for his services in that hero's expedition to Troy. The event justified these apprehensions of Teucer; and to avoid his father's indignation, he fled to Cyprus, where he founded Salamis.

me.

effeminacy betrayed thee, dearest Ajax, or in treason, that I might possess thy sovereignty and patrimony when dead. Such words will he, a man of passionate temper, morose with age, vent forth, angered to strife by a mere nothing. And in the end shall I, repulsed, be an outcast from my country, noted in story as a slave, and no freeman. Thus much at home: but here, at Troy, many are my foes, and little is there to profit And all this have I incurred by thy death. Ah me! what shall I do? how shall I tear thee off from this thy fierce and hasty sword, the destroyer whereby thou didst expire? Knewest thou how in time Hector, even though dead, was doomed to be thy destruction? Observe ye, by the gods I ask, the fate of these two men. Hector, having been fast bound with the very girdle wherewith he was presented from Ajax, by the steeddrawn car was ever racked and mangled until he breathed out his life: while Ajax, possessing this, the gift of Hector, perished by its means from a mortal fall. And was it not a Fury that forged this cimeter, and Hades the other, that fierce artificer? I then would say, that the gods devised both this and every thing else for ever to mankind. But to whomsoever in opinion this is not pleasing, let him fondly cling to other, and me to this.

CH. Extend no length of speech, but bethink thee how thou wilt commit to the tomb thy brother, and what thou presently wilt parley. For I descry a foeman, and haply he may, as would a villain, come forth to laugh at our misfortunes.

TEU. But what man from the army is it that thou seest?

This is not found in Homer's account.