Aias. Ο ye paths of the wave!
Ο ye caves by the sea!
Ο thou glade by the shore!
Long time, long time my feet
On Troïa's soil ye kept;
But never, never more
Breathing the breath of life;
Let the wise hear and heed.
Ο streams, Scamandros' streams
Hard by, to Argives kind,420
Never again shall ye see
This man who calls to you now,
Like whom . . . (though great the vaunt,
Yet will I speak it out)
In all the army that from Hellas came,
Troïa no hero found:
Yet now I lie in this dishonoured plight.
Chor. I know not how to check thee in thy speech,
Nor yet permit it, whelmed in ills like these.
Aias. Ai! ai! who e'er had dreamt my name should be430
So clear a sign and symbol for my woe?[1]
For now 'tis mine to groan this "Ai, ai" forth,
Twice, yea, and thrice, such ills have come on me,
Whose father, head of all the conquering host,
Brought the chief trophies from fair Ida's shore,
And home returned, with highest glory crowned;
And I, his son, to that same Troïa come
With no less power, nor working with my hands
Less mighty deeds, am left to perish here,
- ↑ The irony with which Aias thus finds an omen in his own name becomes all the more bitter when we remember that, in the popular tradition, it was derived from aietos, the kingly eagle, which had appeared to Heracles, as an omen that Zeus had granted his prayer for Telamon, and after which, therefore, Telamon's son was named.
