Thou, in thy death, hast sown for me! Where go,
Among what men, I who in all thy woes
Have failed to help thee? Telamon, I trow,
My father, and thine too, will welcome me
With cheerful glances, full of kindly mood, 1010
Without thee coming! Can he fail to frown
Who, e'en when all went well, but seldom smiled
Too pleasantly on men? What word of wrath
Will he now hide? What evil utter not?
Reproaching me as bastard, captive-born,
Who, in my coward, base unmanliness
Abandoned thee, Ο Aias, or in guile,
That, on thy death, I might thy sceptre wield
And rule thy house? Such foul reproach will he,
Rough in his mood, and vexed sore with age,
Vent in his wrath, by trifles light as air
To fiercest anger kindled. And at last
I shall be hurled an outcast from my home,[1]
Bearing the name of slave instead of free.1020
Such fate awaits me there. In Troïa here
Many my foes, and few the things that help;
And this, all this, thy death hath brought to me.
What shall I do? Alas! how lift thee up
From this bright sword whose murderous point hath brought
Thee, wretched one, to death? And did'st thou know
How Hector thus, though dead, should bring thee low?
Now, by the Gods, look ye upon the fate
Of those two men—how Hector, with the belt
Which this man gave him, bound to chariot's wheel,1030
- ↑ The words of Teucros point prophetically to his later history. He left Salamis, according to the legend, because his father drove him from his presence, went to Kypros, and there founded a city, which he named Salamis, in memory of his fatherland.
