1The leaders took their seats, and, with the common soldiers standing round in a ring, Ajax, master of the sevenfold shield, rises before them, and, impatient of anger as he was, he looked back with a grim face at the Sigean shores and at the fleet on the shore, and, stretching out his hands, 'We are pleading, by Jupiter!' 5he says, 'our case before the ships, and it is Ulysses who is matched with me! 7Yet he did not hesitate to give way before Hector's flames, which I withstood, which I drove from this fleet. 9It is safer, then, to contend with made-up words than to fight with the hand!
10But neither does speaking come readily to me, nor acting to him: and as much as I prevail in fierce warfare and in the battle line, so much does he prevail in talking. 13Nor do I think, Pelasgians, that my deeds need to be recounted to you: for you saw them. 14Let Ulysses tell of his own, which he performs without a witness, of which night alone is aware. 16Great is the prize I seek, I admit; 16but my rival takes away its honour: it is no pride for Ajax to have won anything, however huge it may be, that Ulysses has hoped for. 19He has already now carried off the reward of this contest, since, when he is beaten, it will be said that he competed with me.
21And I, if my valour were open to doubt, would be powerful in my nobility, as the son of Telamon, who captured the walls of Troy under brave Hercules and entered the Colchian shores in the Pagasaean ship. 25His father is Aeacus, who gives judgement to the silent dead there where the heavy rock weighs down Sisyphus, son of Aeolus. 27Highest Jupiter acknowledges Aeacus and declares that he is his own offspring: so Ajax is third from Jove. 29Yet let this line of descent not help my cause, Achaeans, if it is not shared with great Achilles: he was my cousin; it is a cousin's goods I seek! 31Why do you, sprung from the blood of Sisyphus and most like him in thefts and deceit, thrust the names of an alien family among the Aeacidae?
34Or is it because I came to arms first, and with no informer, that the arms must be denied me, and will he seem the stronger claimant who took up service last and shirked the war with feigned madness, until the son of Nauplius, cleverer than he but less useful to himself, unravelled the inventions of his timid mind and dragged him to the arms he had avoided? 40Is he to take the best, because he wanted to take none; are we to be unhonoured and bereft of our cousin's gifts, because we offered ourselves to the first dangers? 43And would that that madness of his had either been real or been believed, and that this man had never come as our companion to the Phrygian citadels, an inciter to crimes!
45Then, son of Poeas, Lemnos would not hold you, put ashore there to our disgrace! 47You who now, as they say, hidden in woodland caves, move the rocks with your groans and call down on Laertes' son what he has deserved: and if there are gods, you do not call it down in vain! 50And now he who swore with us to the same war, alas! 51one of the leaders, the man whom the arrows of Hercules have as their successor, broken by sickness and hunger, is clothed and fed by birds, and in hunting the winged creatures he spends the shafts owed to the fates of Troy. 55Yet he lives, because he did not accompany Ulysses; 56unhappy Palamedes too would have preferred to be left behind: he would be alive, or at least would have had a death without a charge!
58For this man, remembering too well his madness so damagingly exposed, pretended that Palamedes was betraying the Danaan cause, proved the charge he had invented, and displayed the gold that he had buried beforehand. 61So he has taken strength from the Achaeans either by exile or by death: this is how Ulysses fights, this is how he is to be feared. 63Though he may surpass even loyal Nestor in eloquence, he will never bring it about that I think the desertion of Nestor no crime. 65He, when, slowed by his horse's wound and weary with the years of old age, he begged Ulysses for help, was betrayed by his comrade.
67That these charges are not invented by me the son of Tydeus well knows, who, calling him often by name, rebuked him and reproached his frightened friend with his flight. 70The gods above look on mortal affairs with just eyes! 71See, he who gave no help is in need of help, and as he abandoned another, so he deserved to be abandoned: he had laid down the law for himself. 73He shouts for his comrades: I am there, and I see him trembling and pale with fear and dreading the death to come; 75I set the mass of my shield before him and covered him as he lay, and saved his spiritless life (that is the least of my glory here).
77If you persist in contending, let us go back to that place: give back the enemy and your wound and your usual fear, hide behind my shield and contend with me under it! 80But after I rescued him, he for whom his wounds had given no strength to stand fled, slowed by no wound. 82Hector is there and brings the gods with him into battle, and wherever he rushes, not only are you terrified, Ulysses, but the brave too: so much fear does he bring with him. 85Him, exulting in the success of bloody slaughter, I laid flat on his back from afar with a huge weight; him, when he demanded someone to meet him, I alone withstood, and you prayed for my lot, Achaeans, and your prayers prevailed!
89If you ask the outcome of this fight, I was not overcome by him. 91See, the Trojans bring sword and fire and Jupiter against the Danaan fleet: where now is eloquent Ulysses? 93It was I, of course, who protected a thousand ships with my breast, the hope of your return: give me the arms in exchange for so many ships! 95But if I may speak the truth, a greater honour is sought for them than for me, and our glory is bound together, and it is Ajax who is sought for the arms, not the arms for Ajax.