he body of the chiefs is moved, and {then}, in fact appears what
eloquence can do; and the fluent man receives the arms of a brave one.
He, who so often has alone withstood both Hector, and the sword, and
flames, and Jove {himself}, cannot {now} withstand his wrath alone, and
grief conquers the man that is invincible. He seizes his sword, and he
says:-- "This, at least, is my own; or will Ulysses claim this, too, for
himself. This must I use against myself; and {the blade}, which has
often been wet with the blood of the Phrygians, will now be wet with the
slaughter of its owner: that no one but Ajax {himself}, may be enabled
to conquer Ajax."

{Thus} he said; and he plunged the fatal sword into his breast, then for
the first time suffering a wound, where it lay exposed to the steel. Nor
were his hands able to draw out the weapon there fixed: the blood itself
forced it out. And the earth, made red by the blood, produced a purple
flower from the green turf, {the same} which had formerly been produced
from the Oebalian wound. Letters common to {that} youth and to the hero,
were inscribed in the middle of the leaves; the latter {belonging to}
the name,[47] the former to the lamentation.

The conqueror, Ulysses, set sail for the country of Hypsipyle,[48] and
of the illustrious Thoas, and the regions infamous for the slaughter
{there} of the husbands of old; that he might bring back the arrows, the
weapons of the Tirynthian {hero}. After he had carried them back to the
Greeks, their owner attending too, the concluding hand was put, at
length, to this protracted war. Troy and Priam fell together; the
wretched wife of Priam lost after every thing {else} her human form, and
alarmed a foreign air[49] with her barkings. Where the long Hellespont
is reduced into a narrow compass, Ilion was in flames; nor had the
flames yet ceased; and the altar of Jove had drank up the scanty blood
of the aged Priam. The priestess of Apollo[50] dragged by the hair,
extends her unavailing hands towards the heavens. The victorious Greeks
drag along the Dardanian matrons, embracing, while they may, the statues
of their country's Gods, and clinging to the burning temples, an envied
spoil. Astyanax[51] is hurled from those towers from which he was often
wont, when shown by his mother, to behold his father, fighting for
himself, and defending the kingdom of his ancestors.

And now Boreas bids them depart, and with a favourable breeze, the
sails, as the