Sophocles, Ajax 134–200: Parodos: the sailors of Salamis

Son of Telamon, you who hold your throne on wave-washed Salamis near the open sea, when your fortune is fair, I rejoice with you. But whenever the stroke of Zeus, or the raging rumor of the Danaans with the clamor of their evil tongues attacks you, then I shrink with great fear and shudder in terror, like the fluttering eye of the winged dove. Just so with the passing of the night loud tumults oppressed us to our dishonor, telling how you visited the meadow wild with horses and destroyed the cattle of the Greeks, their spoil, prizes of the spear which had not yet been shared, how you killed them with flashing iron. Such are the whispered slanders that Odysseus moulds and breathes into the ears of all, and he wins much belief. For now he tells tales concerning you that easily win belief, and each hearer rejoices with spiteful scorn at your burdens more than he who told. Point your shaft at a noble spirit, and you could not miss; but if a man were to speak such things against me, he would win no belief. It is on the powerful that envy creeps. Yet the small without the great are a teetering tower of defence. For the lowly stand most upright and prosperous when allied with the great, and the great when served by less. But foolish men cannot learn good precepts in these matters beforehand. It is men of this sort that subject you to tumult, and we lack the power to repel these charges without you, O King. For when they have escaped your eye, they chatter like flocking birds. But, terrified by a mighty vulture, perhaps, if you should appear, they would quickly cower without voice in silence.

Was it Artemis ruler of bulls, Zeus’s daughter, that drove you, O powerful Rumor, O mother of my shame, drove you against the herds of all our people? Was she exacting retribution, perhaps, for a victory that had paid her no tribute, whether it was because she had been cheated of the glory of captured arms, or because a stag had been slain without gifts for recompense? Or can the bronze-cuirassed Lord of War have had some cause for anger arising out of an alliance of spears, and taken vengeance for the outrage by contrivance shrouded in night?

For never of your own heart alone, son of Telamon, would you have gone so far down the sinister path as to fall upon the flocks. When the gods send madness, it cannot but reach its target, but may Zeus and Phoebus avert the evil rumor of the Greeks! And if it is the great kings who slander you with their furtive stories, or if it is he born of the abject line of Sisyphus, do not, my king, do not win me an evil name by keeping your face still hidden in the tent by the sea.

Come now, up from your seat, wherever you are settled in this long-lived pause from battle and are making the flame of disaster blaze up to the sky! The violent insolence of your enemies rushes fearlessly about in the breezy glens, while the tongues of all the army cackle out a load of grief. For me, sorrow stands firmly planted.