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Chorus
You were bound, poor man, with that unbending heart you were bound, it seems, to fulfill a harsh destiny of limitless toils! So wild to my ears [930] were the words of hatred which in your fierce mood you moaned against the Atreidae with such deadly passion. True it is that that moment was a potent source of sorrows, [935] when the arms were made the prize for a contest in the skills of warfare! Tecmessa
Ah! Ah! Chorus
True anguish, I know, pierces your heart. Tecmessa
Ah! Ah, me! Chorus
[940] I do not wonder, lady, that you wail and wail again, when you have just lost one so loved. Tecmessa
It is for you to analyze my troubles, but for me to feel them too fully. Chorus
I must agree. Tecmessa
Oh, my son, to what a heavy yoke of slavery [945] we advance! What cruel task-masters stand over us! Chorus
Ah, the deeds of the two ruthless Atreidae which you name in our present grief would be unthinkable! May the gods hold them back! Tecmessa
[950] These events that you see would not have happened as they have without the will of the gods. Chorus
Yes, they have brought upon us a burden too heavy to bear. Tecmessa
Yet what suffering the divine daughter of Zeus, fierce Pallas, engenders for Odysseus' sake! Chorus
[955] No doubt the much-enduring hero exults in his dark soul and mocks in loud laughter at these frenzied sorrows—what shame!— [960] and with him, when they hear the news, will laugh the royal brothers, the Atreidae.
Sophocles. The Ajax of Sophocles. Edited with introduction and notes by Sir Richard Jebb. Sir Richard Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1893.
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