bringing Benjamin with them, so the foster-brother shrinks from returning alone to Salamis and facing the aged Telamon—fierce even in his gentlest mood; and he foresees, what actually happened, that he will be driven, like a slave and an outcast, from his doors. And then he moralises over the fatality of an enemy's gifts, which have brought death and dole to giver and receiver.
"Mark, by the gods, these hapless heroes' fate.
Bound by the very belt which Ajax gave
To the swift chariot, Hector breathed his last:
He too, possessing Hector's fatal gift,
By it hath perished with a mortal wound.
Did not some Fury forge that sword, and Death—
A stern artificer—that baldric weave?
Such fates, I ween, the gods for man ordain;
Yea, and all strange vicissitudes of life."—(D.)
Here it seems as if the play should end; but it is carried on into another act. To an Athenian audience, Ajax was more than a hero of tragedy: he was almost a tutelary god, the deified ancestor of one of their noblest families, to which not only Miltiades, but Alcibiades, and Thucydides the historian—perhaps actual spectators of the play—all belonged. Divine honours were paid to his tomb; and a yearly festival was held in his memory at Salamis His burial, therefore, even on the stage, had almost the sanctity of a religious rite; and Menelaus and his brother (as types of Argos and Sparta, the national enemies of Athens) appropriately "fill the posts of 'Devil's Advocates' at this process of canonisation."[1]
