313Nor have I deserved to be put on trial because Vulcan's Lemnos holds the son of Poeas: defend your own deed, for you consented to it. 315Nor will I deny that I advised him to withdraw from the toil of war and of the journey and to try to end his fierce pains by rest. 318He obeyed, and he lives! 318This advice was not only loyal but fortunate, though it is enough to be loyal. 320Since the seers demand him for the destruction of Pergamum, do not entrust the task to me: better that Telamon's son should go, and with his eloquence soothe the man raging with sickness and anger, or cleverly draw him out by some art.
324Sooner will the Simois flow backwards and Ida stand without leaves and Achaea promise help to Troy, than, with my heart ceasing to work for your interests, the shrewdness of stupid Ajax should be of use to the Danaans! 328Though you are hostile to your comrades and the king and me, hard Philoctetes, though you curse me and devote my head to destruction without end and long that I might by chance be given to you in your pain and that you might drain my blood, yet I shall approach you and strive to bring you back with me, and I shall gain possession of your arrows (may Fortune favour me!) as surely as I gained possession of the Dardan seer whom I captured, as surely as I uncovered the answers of the gods and the fates of Troy, as surely as I snatched the inmost image of Phrygian Minerva from the midst of the enemy.
338And Ajax compares himself with me? 339The fates, of course, forbade Troy to be taken without that image: where is brave Ajax? 340Where are the huge words of the great man? 341Why are you afraid here? 341why does Ulysses dare to go through the sentries and entrust himself to the night and, through savage swords, to enter not only the walls of the Trojans but even their highest citadel, and snatch the goddess from her shrine and carry her off through the enemy? 346Had I not done this, in vain would the son of Telamon have carried the hides of seven bulls on his left arm. 348On that night victory over Troy was won by me; I conquered Pergamum then, when I made it possible for it to be conquered!
350Stop pointing out to us my comrade, the son of Tydeus, with your looks and your muttering: his share of the praise is in that deed. 352Nor were you alone when you were holding your shield before the allied fleet: you had a crowd as companions, I had only one. 354And if he did not know that the fighter is inferior to the wise man and that the prizes are not owed to an untamed right hand, he himself would also seek these; the more moderate Ajax would seek them, and fierce Eurypylus, and the son of famous Andraemon, and no less Idomeneus, and Meriones born of the same country; the brother of the elder son of Atreus would seek them: for, though brave in hand and not second to you in war, they have yielded to my counsels.
361Your right hand is useful in war: it is your mind that needs my guidance; 363you have strength without intelligence, I have care for the future; 364you can fight; the times for fighting the son of Atreus chooses with me; 365you serve only with your body, we with our mind; 366and as much as the man who steers the ship surpasses the oarsman's duty, as much as the general is greater than the soldier, so much do I surpass you; 368and in my body, too, the heart is more powerful than the hand: all vigour lies in it. 370But you, chieftains, give the prize to your watchman, and in return for the care of so many years, which I have spent in anxiety, award this distinction as a recompense for my merits.
373Now the toil is at an end: I have removed the opposing fates, and by making lofty Pergamum capable of capture I have captured it. 375By our shared hopes now, and the walls of the Trojans doomed to fall, and by the gods whom I lately took from the enemy, by anything that still remains to be done with wisdom, if anything bold and perilous still remains to be sought, remember me! 380Or, if you do not give the arms to me, give them to her!' 381— and he showed the fateful image of Minerva. 382The band of chieftains was moved, and what eloquence could do was revealed in the event: the man of words carried off the brave man's arms.
384He who alone so often withstood Hector, who withstood sword and fire and Jupiter, does not withstand one thing, his anger, and grief conquered the unconquered hero: he seizes his sword and, 'This at least is mine! 387Or does Ulysses claim this too for himself? 388This,' he says, 'I must use against myself, and the blade that has often been wet with Phrygian blood will now be wet with its master's death, so that no one may overcome Ajax but Ajax.' 391He spoke, and into his breast, which then at last suffered a wound, where it lay open to the steel, he plunged the deadly sword. 393Nor could hands draw out the embedded weapon: the blood itself drove it out, and the earth, reddened with blood, produced from the green turf a purple flower, which had earlier been born from the Oebalian wound; 397letters shared by boy and man are inscribed in the middle of its petals, these of a name, those of a lament.