The Madness (Prologue and Entry of the Chorus)

At dawn, outside the tent of Ajax in the Greek camp by the shore of Troy, Odysseus was creeping along, tracking footprints in the sand, like a hound on a scent. A voice spoke to him from above: the goddess Athena, his protector, whom he could hear but not see.

He told her what he was looking for: in the night, all the captured cattle of the army had been found slaughtered, and their herdsmen with them; and a scout had seen Ajax alone, leaping across the plain with a bloody sword. Was it true?

It was true, said Athena. Ajax, in his rage at losing the armour of Achilles, had set out alone in the night to kill Agamemnon and Menelaus and Odysseus himself; he had reached the very doors of their tents. And she had stopped him: she had thrown upon his eyes false fancies, and turned his fury against the flocks and herds, the spoils of the army not yet divided. He had fallen on them, killing, hacking, thinking now that he was killing the two sons of Atreus with his own hand, now another of the commanders; and some he had dragged home alive to his tent, bound, to torture — thinking them men.

She would show Odysseus the madness of Ajax, so that he could tell all the Greeks. Odysseus was afraid: he did not want to see him. "What? Would you not laugh at your enemy? Is not the sweetest laughter laughter at one's enemies?" But she called Ajax out.

He came out, bloody, triumphant, still mad, and greeted the goddess as his ally. He had killed the sons of Atreus, he boasted; and Odysseus — "that fox" — he had tied up inside, and meant to whip him to death against a post. Athena, playing with him, begged him to spare the poor wretch; he refused, and went back in to his torturing.

The "Odysseus" he was whipping was a ram.

Athena turned to Odysseus. "You see, Odysseus, how great is the power of the gods? Whom could you have found more prudent than this man, or better at doing what the moment needed?" And Odysseus, unexpectedly, felt pity: "I know no one. I pity him in his misery, though he is my enemy, because he is yoked to an evil fate — thinking of myself no less than of him. For I see that all of us who live are nothing but phantoms, or a fleeting shadow."

"Look at this, then," said Athena, "and never yourself speak an arrogant word against the gods, nor swell with pride if you surpass another in strength or in wealth. A single day brings low and raises up again all human things. The gods love those who know their limits, and hate the wicked."

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The Chorus came in: sailors from Salamis, Ajax's own island, his loyal men. They had heard the rumours flying through the camp — that their lord had slaughtered the cattle — and they were afraid and ashamed. It was Odysseus, they thought, who whispered these stories into everyone's ears. Some god must have struck their master. Let him come out and show himself; and they begged him to rise up, and not let his enemies laugh at him.