Metamorphoses

“The supreme Jupiter owns Æacus, and confesses that he is his offspring. Thus Ajax is the third from Jupiter. And yet, O Greeks, let not this line of descent avail me in this cause, if it be not common to me with the great Achilles. He was my cousin; I ask for what belonged to my cousin? Why does one descended from the blood of Sisyphus, and very like him in thefts and fraud, intrude the name of a strange family among the descendants of Æacus? Are the arms to be denied me, because I took up arms before him , and through the means of no informer? and shall one seem preferable who was the last to take them up, and who, by feigning madness, declined war, until the son of Nauplius, more cunning than he, but more unhappy for himself, discovered the contrivance of his cowardly mind, and dragged him forth to the arms which he had avoided. Now let him take the best arms who would have taken none. Let me be dishonoured, and stripped of the gifts that belonged to my cousin, who presented myself in the front of danger. And I could wish that that madness had been either real or believed so to be , and that he had never attended us as a companion to the Phrygian towers, this counsellor of evil! Then, son of Pœas, Lemnos would not have had thee exposed there through our guilt; who now, as they say, concealed in sylvan caves, art moving the very rocks with thy groans, and art wishing for the son of Laërtes what he has deserved; which, may the Gods, the Gods, I say , grant thee not to pray in vain.

MetamorphosesOvidHenry T. RileyEnglishVerse permalinkRead in Book 13

Book 13, Line 2ProseID metamorphoses-riley-en-prose-13-2