e. Is it base for me, with a false crime to
have charged Palamedes, {and} honourable for you to have condemned him?
But neither could {Palamedes}, the son of Nauplius, defend a crime so
great, and so manifest; nor did you {only} hear the charges against him,
{but} you witnessed them, and in the bribe {itself} the charge was
established. Nor have I deserved to be accused, because Lemnos, {the
isle} of Vulcan, {still} receives {Philoctetes}, the son of Poeas.
{Greeks}, defend your own acts! for you consented to it. Nor yet shall I
deny that I advised him to withdraw himself from the toils of the
warfare and the voyage, and to try by rest to assuage his cruel pains.
He consented, and {still} he lives. This advice was not only well-meant,
but {it was} fortunate as well, when 'twas enough to be well-meant.
Since our prophets demand him for the purpose of destroying Troy,
entrust not that to me. The son of Telamon will be better to go, and by
his eloquence will soften the hero, maddened by diseases and anger, or
by some wile will skilfully bring him thence. Sooner will Simois flow
backward, and Ida stand without foliage, and Achaia promise aid to Troy,
than, my breast being inactive in your interest, the skill of stupid
Ajax shall avail the Greeks.

"Though thou be, relentless Philoctetes, enraged against thy friends and
the king, and myself, though thou curse and devote my head,
everlastingly, and though thou wish to have me in thy anguish thrown in
thy way perchance, and to shed my blood; and though if I meet thee,
so thou wilt have the opportunity of meeting me, still will I attempt
{thee, and} will endeavour to bring thee back with me. And, if Fortune
favours me, I will as surely be the possessor of thy arrows, as I was
the possessor of the Dardanian prophet[40] whom I took {prisoner; and
so} I revealed the answers of the Deities and the fates of Troy; {and}
as I carried off the hidden statue[41] of the Phrygian Minerva from the
midst of the enemy. And does Ajax, {then}, compare himself with me? The
Fates, in fact, would not allow Troy to be captured without that
{statue}. Where is the valiant Ajax? where are the boastful words of
that mighty man? Why art thou trembling here? Why dares Ulysses to go
through the guards, and to entrust himself to the night, and, through
fell swords, to enter not only the walls of Troy, but even its highest
towers, and to tear the Goddess from her shrine, and, {thus} torn,
to bear her off am