In kind the wrongs that they have done to me!
O son of Poeas, I too pity thee
No less methinks than did those visitors.
And I myself am witness that thy tale
Is true; for I have proved the villainy
Of the Atridae, and Odysseus too.
What have those cursed Atridae wrongèd thee?
Art thou too stirred to anger by some wrong?
O that my wrath might vent itself in deeds!
Mycenae then and Sparta both would learn
That Scyros too is mother of brave sons.
Well said, my son! But I would know the grounds
Of thy resentment, what the charge thou bring’st,
Why thou art here.
I scarce know how, O son
Of Poeas, yet I’ll tell the tale of wrongs
I suffered on my coming at their hands.
When by the doom of Fate Achilles died—
Woe’s me! No more; first tell me, is he dead,
The son of Peleus?
He is dead indeed,
Slain by no man but by a god; a shaft
Pierced him; by Phoebus sped, so runs the tale.
Noble alike the slayer and the slain!
I know not whether first, my son, to make
Inquiry of thy woes or weep for him.
Thou hast enough of thine own pains, poor soul,
Without lamenting for another’s woe.
True, true indeed! So tell me once again
From the beginning how they outraged thee.
To fetch me in a gay decked galley came
Odysseus and my father’s foster-sire.2
They told me (if the tale was true or feigned
I know not) that, my father having fallen,
No hand but mine could take the Citadel.
Thus urged I did not dally or delay.
Forthwith I sailed. Chiefly I longed to see
My father whom in life I had not seen,
Before his burial, and in part, I own,
The promise fair that I should take Troy-town
Flattered my pride. Well, on the second day,
With oars and breeze to speed us, we had reached
Sigeum (hateful name) and when I landed
The whole host pressed to greet me, and they swore
They saw Achilles come to life again.
There lay my sire in death, and I, poor fool,
When I had mourned for him a while, betook me
To the Atridae as my natural friends,
Claiming my sire’s arms and what else was his.
O ’twas a sorry answer that they made:
“Child of Achilles, all that was thy sire’s
Is thine and welcome—all except his arms;
These to Laertes’ son have been assigned.”
I wept, I started to my feet in wrath,
And bitterly I spake, “O tyrannous men,
How dare ye give these arms, my own by right,
My leave unasked, to any man but me?”
Then said Odysseus who was standing by,
“Yes, boy, and rightly are they given to me,
Who rescued both their master and his arms.”3
I boiled with rage, I hurled at him abuse
The bitterest tongue could frame, I cursed the man
Who would defraud me of my rightful arms.
He, though not choleric, challenged thus direct,
Stung to the quick by my retort, replied:
“Thou wast not with us, a malingerer thou!
Take this for answer to thy blustering boasts:
To Scyros with these arms thou ne’er shalt sail.”
Thus flouted and abused I left the host,
And now am sailing homewards, robbed by him,
Odysseus, the base villain, basely born.
Yet is he less to blame than those who rule;
For like a commonwealth each armèd host
Perforce is subject to authority,
And all the lawless doings in the world
Spring from ill teaching. All my tale is told.
But whoso hates the Atridae, as do I,
May he find Heaven, no less than me, his friend!
Strophe
O mother Earth, enthronèd on the hills,
Mother of Zeus himself, who feedest all;
From thee Pactolus draws his brimming rills,
His golden sands; Mother, to thee I call,
As once I called when, flushed with upstart pride,
The fierce Atridae ’gainst my master raged,
(O lady who on yokèd lions doth ride,
Their bloody ravening by thee assuaged,)
What time the tyrants to Laertes’ son
The guerdon gave, those arms his sire had won.
Good sirs, ye bring me as a talisman,
A common grief; a plaint attuned to mine.
Full well I recognise in this your tale
The Atridae and Odysseus. He, I warrant,
Would have a hand and lend his tongue to abet
Any conspiracy, any deep-laid plot,
If he could compass some dishonest end.
This is not wonderful; but was indeed
The greater Ajax by, to see and brook it?
Ajax, my friend, was dead; had he been living
They would not thus have robbed me and despoiled.
What say’st thou, boy? is he too dead and gone?
Yea he hath left the light.
Alas, alas!
But not the son of Tydeus, nor the son
Named of Laertes, bred of Sisyphus;
They die not who should never have been born.
Not they indeed, I warrant; they live on,
And in the Argive host are mighty men.
And what of him, my good old friend and true,
The Pylian Nestor, lives he not? for he
Oft by his wisdom checked their ill designs.
He is not what he once was, since he lost
His best belovèd son, Antilochus.
Alas! thou tell’st me of a double loss,
The two men whom of all I least could spare.
Ah me! What hope is there when two such men
Are taken and Odysseus lives, whose death
Instead of theirs thou hadst by rights announced?
A cunning gamester, but the cunningest,
O Philoctetes, are full often thrown.
But tell me, prithee, where was he the while,
Patroclus, once thy father’s bosom friend?
Dead like the rest, for this in sooth is true:
War never slays an evil man by choice,
But still the good.
In that I’ll bear thee out.
By the same token, I would ask of one,
A worthless wight, but shrewd and glib of tongue.
Thou mean’st Odysseus, surely?
Not of him
I asked, but of Thersites, one whose tongue
Was ever wagging most when wanted least,
An empty babbler. Know’st thou if he lives?
I saw him not, but heard he was alive.
I thought as much; for evil never dies,
Fostered too well by gods who take delight,
Methinks, to turn back from
