CHO. Ajax, I could wish thou didst feel pity in thy heart, even as I do, for then wouldst thou assent to her words.

AJ. Nay, largely shall she meet with approbation from me at least, if she but dare aright to execute the task enjoined.

TEC. Nay, my dear Ajax, for my part I will obey thee in every thing.

AJ. Go fetch me now my son, that I may see him. TEC. Nay, but in alarm I rescued him from thee. AJ. In these my woes? or what meanest thou? TEC. Lest he, ill-fated, having haply fallen in thy way, should die.

AJ. This were, indeed, well suited to my fate.

TEC. Nay, therefore I guarded him, to prevent this.

AJ. I approve of the action and the forethought you practised.

TEC. By doing what then, in this case, can I profit you?

AJ. Give me to speak to him, and see him before

me.

TEC. Well, but he is at hand, in keeping of the attendants.

AJ. Why then delays he to vouchsafe his presence? TEC. My boy, thy father calls thee. Bring him hither, whoever of the servants hast him in charge in thy hands.

this passage; but Lobeck has adopted the Professor's emendation of Suidas. For just reasons against the other readings proposed by Porson, vid. Seale's Metres, p. 11.

AJ. Dost thou speak to him drawing near, or out of reach of thy words?

TEC. Even now this attendant is conveying him from no great distance.

AJ. Bring, bring him hither, for he will not shudder at beholding this fresh slaughtered butchery, if he be truly in his father's ways my son. Nay, forthwith it is needful to break him in, as a colt, to the stern lore of his sire, and that he be rendered like him in nature. My child, be thou more fortunate than thy father, but in all else his counterpart, and thou canst not be a coward. Yet even now thus much I have to envy thee, for that thou art sensible of none of these present evils. For in 'feeling nought is centred the sweetest life, until thou learn to know what pleasure is, what pain. But when thou art arrived at this, it is thy duty to prove on thy father's foes, thyself how great, from how great a father thou art sprung. Till then be fostered by light gales, cherishing thy spring of life, the joy of this thy mother. There is no fear, I know, that any of the Greeks should insult thee with hateful contumely; no, though thou art far from me, such a watchful protector in Teucer shall I leave for thee, an unwearied guardian

f"Ah! how regardless of their doom

The little victims play!

No sense have they of ills to come,

No care beyond to-day."

GRAY.

g

Lobeck praises, in his note on this passage, Reiske's emendation, who reads α, xri tavuv; and the Scholiast on v. 122 says the Ionians use ἔμπης, the Attics, ἔμπας and ἔμπα.

of thy nurture, although at present he is gone far out of sight, busied in the chase of foemen. But, O ye shielded warriors, seafaring race, to you also I enjoin this common favour, and announce ye to him my mandate, that he bring this my son to my home, and present him to Telamon and my mother, I mean "Eriboea, that he may ever be the support of their old age, until they shall reach the dark chambers of the nether God. And mine arms let no masters of the games, nor he, my bane, set as a prize to the Greeks; but do thou, my son Eurysaces, take and keep thy namesake, my sevenfold shield infrangible; wielding it through the thickly sewed brace: my other arms in common shall anon be buried with me. But take now with all speed this my son, and make fast the house, nor raise the tearful lament within my tent. Over prone to grief is the sex. Close the door speedily: 'tis not the skilful leech's part to howl an incantation over a sore that asks the knife.

i

CHO. I tremble at hearing this eagerness, for thy sharpened tongue likes me not.

TEC. Ajax, my Lord, what canst thou purpose in thy mind to do?

AJ. Ask not, question not; best be resigned.

TEC. Ah me, how I despair! I conjure thee by thy child, and by the Gods, abandon us not.

h Eriboa, sometimes called Periboa, was daughter of Alcathous, king of Megara, and son of Pelops, and is said to have been sold by her father on suspicion of an intrigue with Telamon, and carried to Cyprus, whither Telamon followed and married her.

i This was a common custom in ancient times, as may be gathered from Thucydides, L. I. c. viii.

alas! co-mate of a heaven-sent phrenzy; whom once, in former time, thou sentest forth a conqueror in furious war; but now on the contrary, his senses all astray, he has proved a deep affliction to his friends. But the former deeds of his hands, deeds of noblest valour, fell, aye, fell, thankless to the thankless; the unwise Atridæ. Surely, somewhere a mother nursed in the lap of ancient days and hoar old age, when she shall have heard that he is diseased as with the sickness of the soul, hapless shall utter a dirge,-a dirge, no plaint of the nightingale, that piteous bird, but shrill-toned shrieks, will she wail forth; while blows, struck by her own hand, shall fall on her breasts, and rendings of her hoary hair. For better were he hiding in the grave, than hopelessly distempered; who coming of his father's race the bravest of the hard-toiling Greeks, is no longer constant to his natural temper, but is wandering without it. Ah, wretched sire, what an insupportable calamity of thy child awaits thee to learn! such as no age of the Eacidæ hath ever yet fostered, at least save this

man!

AJ. Time, the long, the countless, brings to light all that is unseen, and when disclosed conceals, nor is

himself, and the Oxford translator has this note: "The "pides (tertianus) was a combatant, who waited the decision of some trial of prowess in the games, with intent to offer himself as opponent to the conqueror." p. 169.

• Literally, "feeding apart from his senses."

▷ There is great beauty in the suppression of the name throughout this passage: it may in some measure be thought to resemble the veil of Timanthes.