Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Jebb 1917).djvu/197

278—306] . Yea verily: and I fear lest the stroke of a god hath fallen. How else, if his spirit is no lighter, now that the malady is overpast, than when it vexed him?

. Thus stands the matter, be well assured.

. And in what wise did the plague first swoop upon him? Declare to us, who share thy pain, how it befell.

. Thou shalt hear all that chanced, as one who hath part therein. At dead of night, when the evening lamps no longer burned, he seized a two-edged sword, and was fain to go forth on an aimless path. Then I chid him, and said; 'What dost thou, Ajax? why wouldst thou make this sally unsummoned,—not called by messenger, not warned by trumpet? Nay, at present the whole army sleeps.'

But he answered me in curt phrase and trite: 'Woman, silence graces women.' And I, thus taught, desisted; but he rushed forth alone. What happened abroad, I cannot tell: but he came in with his captives bound together,—bulls, shepherd dogs, and fleecy prisoners. Some he beheaded; of some, he cut the back-bent throat, or cleft the chine; others, in their bonds, he tormented as though they were men, with onslaughts on the cattle.

At last, he darted forward through the door, and began ranting to some creature of his brain,—now against the Atreidae, now about Odysseus,—with many a mocking vaunt of all the despite that he had wreaked on them in his raid. Anon, he rushed back once more into the house; and then, by slow, painful steps, regained his reason.