AG.  And so I hear thou’lt stretch thy mouth agape
With big bold words against us undismayed—­
Thou, the she-captive’s offspring!  High would scale
Thy voice, and pert would be thy strutting gait,
Were but thy mother noble; since, being naught,
So stiff thou stand’st for him who is nothing now,
And swear’st we came not as commanders here
Of all the Achaean navy, nor of thee;
But Aias sailed, thou say’st, with absolute right. 
Must we endure detraction from a slave? 
What was the man thou noisest here so proudly? 
Have I not set my foot as firm and far? 
Or stood his valour unaccompanied
In all this host?  High cause have we to rue
That prize-encounter for Pelides’ arms,
Seeing Teucer’s sentence stamps our knavery
For all to know it; and nought will serve but ye,
Being vanquished, kick at the award that passed
By voice of the majority in the court,
And either pelt us with rude calumnies,
Or stab at us, ye laggards! with base guile. 
Howbeit, these ways will never help to build
The wholesome order of established law,
If men shall hustle victors from their right,
And mix the hindmost rabble with the van. 
That craves repression.  Not by bulky size,
Or shoulders’ breadth, the perfect man is known;
But wisdom gives chief power in all the world. 
The ox hath a huge broadside, yet is held
Right in the furrow by a slender goad;
Which remedy, I perceive, will pass ere long
To visit thee, unless thy wisdom grow;
Who hast uttered forth such daring insolence
For the pale shadow of a vanished man. 
Learn modestly to know thy place and birth,
And bring with thee some freeborn advocate
To plead thy cause before us in thy room. 
I understand not in the barbarous tongue,
And all thy talk sounds nonsense to mine ear.

CH.  Would ye might both have sense to curb your ire! 
No better hope for either can I frame.

TEU.  Fie!  How doth gratitude when men are dead
Prove renegade and swiftly pass away! 
This Agamemnon hath no slightest word
Of kind remembrance any more for thee,
Aias, who oftentimes for his behoof
Hast jeoparded thy life in labour of war. 
Now all is clean forgotten and out of mind. 
Thou who hast multiplied words void of sense,
Hast thou no faintest memory of the time
When who but Aias came and rescued you
Already locked within the toils,—­all lost,
The rout began:  when close abaft the ships
The torches flared, and o’er the bootless trench
Hector was bounding high to board our fleet? 
Who stayed that onset?  Was not Aias he? 
Whom thou deny’st to have once set foot by thine. 
Find ye no merit there?  And once again
When he met Hector singly, man to man,
Not by your bidding, but the lottery’s choice,
His lot, that skulked not low adown i’ the heap,
A moist earth-clod, but sure to spring in air,