Just as Teucer is about to remove the body in order to prepare it for burial, Menelaus, accompanied by a herald, appears, and haughtily bids him leave the corpse as it lies upon the sand. "There," he says, "it shall remain, food for the birds that haunt the shore; for in his lifetime Ajax had been a worse foe to the Greeks than all the Trojans." Then follows an angry dialogue, in which the speakers, with Homeric roughness, exchange all degrees of insult, from the "reply churlish" to the "lie direct." Teucer is a fearless champion of the dead, and cares nothing for the rank of his opponent or for the consequences to himself. "Come, therefore," he replies, in a spirit as haughty as the Spartan's,—
"Come, therefore, bring with thee a host of heralds;
Yea, bring the King of men himself. I care not
For all thy stir, while thou art—what thou art."
Menelaus, accordingly, goes to summon his brother Agamenmon; and Teucer calls Tecmessa and Eurysaces to watch the body while he prepares the grave. Then he bids the young child sit as a suppliant, with one hand on the corpse, and holding in the other a lock of his father's hair.
"And should one
In all our army tear thee from the dead,
May he thus bare, unburied, basely die,
An exile from his home, with all his race
As utterly cut off, as I now cut
This braided lock."—(P.)
The Chorus deplore the weary length of the siege, and curse the memory of him who first taught war to the
