face, and he stood silent and unmoving, and could not speak a word, till
his friends came round him and led him away to his hut, and there he sat
down and would not eat or drink, and the night fell.

Long he sat, musing in his mind, and then rose and put on all his armour,
and seized a sword that Hector had given him one day when they two fought
in a gentle passage of arms, and took courteous farewell of each other,
and Aias had given Hector a broad sword-belt, wrought with gold. This
sword, Hector's gift, Aias took, and went towards the hut of Ulysses,
meaning to carve him limb from limb, for madness had come upon him in his
great grief. Rushing through the night to slay Ulysses he fell upon the
flock of sheep that the Greeks kept for their meat. And up and down
among them he went, smiting blindly till the dawn came, and, lo! his
senses returned to him, and he saw that he had not smitten Ulysses, but
stood in a pool of blood among the sheep that he had slain. He could not
endure the disgrace of his madness, and he fixed the sword, Hector's
gift, with its hilt firmly in the ground, and went back a little way, and
ran and fell upon the sword, which pierced his heart, and so died the
great Aias, choosing death before a dishonoured life.




ULYSSES SAILS TO SEEK THE SON OF ACHILLES.--THE VALOUR OF EURYPYLUS


When the Greeks found Aias lying dead, slain by his own hand, they made
great lament, and above all the brother of Aias, and his wife Tecmessa
bewailed him, and the shores of the sea rang with their sorrow. But of
all no man was more grieved than Ulysses, and he stood up and said: