Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/454

---

---

'Twas meet to think them,) and of them I asked
My father's arms, and all things else of his.
And they spake out, ah me! a shameless speech:
"Ο offspring of Achilles, all the rest
That was thy father's it is thine to choose;
But of those arms another now is lord,
Laertes' son." And I with many a tear
Rise up in hot displeasure, and I say,
In my fierce wrath, "Ο wretch! and have ye dared
To give my arms, before ye learnt my mind,370
To any but to me?" And then there spake
Odysseus, for he chanced to stand hard by,
"Yea, boy; most justly have they given them me,
For I, being with him, saved both him and them."
And I, being angry, hurled all evil words
Straight in his teeth, and nothing left unsaid,
Should he deprive me of those arms of mine.
And he at this point, though not prone to wrath,
Stung to the quick, thus answered what he heard:
"Thou wast not where we were, but stood'st aloof
Where thou should'st not; and since thou speak'st to us,
So bold of tongue, with these thou ne'er shalt sail380
To Skyros back." And hearing words like these.
And foul reproaches, now I homeward sail,
Out of mine own rights cheated by a man
Base-born, Odysseus, basest of the base.
And yet I blame not him so much as those
Who reign supreme; for all a city hangs,
And all an army, on the men that rule;
And they who wax unruly in their deeds
Come to be base through mood of those that guide.
Now my whole tale is told, and he who hates
The Atreidæ, may he be my friend and God's!390