above men. An ideal or heroic character is lent to him, partly by the grandeur with which two feelings—remorse, and the sense that his dishonour must be effaced by death—absolutely predominate over all other emotions, as over pity for Tecmessa and his son; chiefly by his terrible nearness to Athene, as one whom with her own voice she had once urged to battle, promising her aid—when, face to face with her, he vaunted his independence of her, and provoked her anger;—then, as the blinded victim whom she, his pretended ally, had stung into the senseless slaughter—lastly, as the conscious, broken-hearted sufferer of her chastisement.
In the farewell of Ajax to Tecmessa and the seamen who had come with him from Salamis to Troy—a farewell really final, but disguised as temporary under a sustained (though possibly unconscious) irony—the human and the heroic elements are thus blended:—
"All things the long and countless years first draw from darkness, then bury from light; and nothing is past hope, but there is confusion even for the dreadful oath and for the stubborn will. For even I, I once so wondrous firm, like iron in the dipping felt my keen edge dulled by yon woman's words; and I have ruth to leave her a widow with my foes, and the boy an orphan. But I will go to the sea-waters and the meadows by the shore, that in the purging of my stains I may flee the heavy anger of the goddess....Henceforth I shall know how to yield to the gods and learn to revere the
