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Rh Greeks, and thereby cut them off from all the joys of life—"garlands, and brimming wine-cups, and the flute's sweet music, and sleep, and love."

Teucer enters again, and at the same moment there is seen approaching from the Greek camp a tall chieftain of stately bearing, in resplendent armour. It is "the King of men, the commander of the host," Agamemnon himself. He addresses Teucer with studied insolence, affecting not even to understand his "barbarous tongue." "Does the son of the bondmaid," he asks, "presume to set himself up as champion of a hero no whit better than his fellow-captains? Let him bring a free-born Greek to plead his cause." Teucer replies half in anger, half in sorrow, that the valour and the good services of Ajax should so soon have faded from men's remembrance. He apostrophises