Servius Oppidius, so the story runs,
Rich for his time, bequeathed to his two sons
Two good-sized farms, and calling to his bed
The hopeful youths, in faltering accents said: 
’E’er since I saw you, Aulus, give away
Your nuts and taws, or squander them at play,
While you, Tiberius, careful and morose,
Would count them over, hide them, keep them close,
I’ve feared lest both should err in different ways,
And one have Cassius’, one Cicuta’s craze. 
So now I beg you by the household powers
Who guard, and still shall guard, this roof of ours,
That you diminish not, nor you augment
What I and nature fix for your content. 
To bar ambition too, I lay an oath
Of heaviest weight upon the souls of both;
Should either be an aedile, or, still worse,
A praetor, let him feel a father’s curse. 
What? would you wish to lavish my bequest
In vetches, beech-nuts, lupines and the rest,
You, that in public you may strut, or stand
All bronze, when stripped of money, stripped of land;
You, that Agrippa’s plaudits you may win,
A sneaking fox in a brave lion’s skin?’

“What moves you, Agamemnon, thus to fling
Great Ajax to the dogs?  ‘I am a king.’ 
And I a subject:  therefore I forbear
More questions.  ’Right; for what I will is fair: 
Yet, if there be who fancy me unjust,
I give my conduct up to be discussed.’ 
Mightiest of mighty kings, may proud success
And safe return your conquering army bless! 
May I ask questions then, and shortly speak
When you have answered?  ‘Take the leave you seek.’ 
Then why should Ajax, though so oft renowned
For patriot service, rot above the ground,
Your bravest next Achilles, just that Troy
And envious Priam may the scene enjoy,
Beholding him, through whom their children came
To feed the dogs, himself cast out to shame? 
’A flock the madman slew, and cried that he
Had killed my brother, Ithacus, and me.’ 
Well, when you offered in a heifer’s stead
Your child, and strewed salt meal upon her head,
Then were you sane, I ask you?  ‘Why not sane?’
Why, what did Ajax when the flock was slain? 
He did no violence to his wife or child: 
He cursed the Atridae, true; his words were wild;
But against Teucer ne’er a hand he raised,
Nor e’en Ulysses:  yet you call him crazed. 
’But I, of purpose, soothed the gods with blood,
To gain our fleet free passage o’er the flood.’ 
Blood! ay, your own, you madman.  ’Nay, not so: 
My own, I grant it:  but a madman’s, no.’

“He that sees things amiss, his mind distraught
By guilty deeds, a madman will be thought;
And, so the path of reason once be missed,
Who cares if rage or folly gave the twist? 
When Ajax falls with fury on the fold,
He shows himself a madman, let us hold: 
When you, of purpose, do a crime to gain
A meed of empty glory, are you sane?