Nor yet the rage his boiling breast forsook, Which thus redoubling on Atrides broke: “O monster! mix’d of insolence and fear, Thou dog in forehead, but in heart a deer! When wert thou known in ambush’d fights to dare, Or nobly face the horrid front of war? ’Tis ours, the chance of fighting fields to try; Thine to look on, and bid the valiant die: So much ’tis safer through the camp to go, And rob a subject, than despoil a foe. Scourge of thy people, violent and base! Sent in Jove’s anger on a slavish race; Who, lost to sense of generous freedom past, Are tamed to wrongs;—or this had been thy last. Now by this sacred sceptre hear me swear, Which never more shall leaves or blossoms bear, Which sever’d from the trunk (as I from thee) On the bare mountains left its parent tree; This sceptre, form’d by temper’d steel to prove An ensign of the delegates of Jove, From whom the power of laws and justice springs (Tremendous oath! inviolate to kings); By this I swear:—when bleeding Greece again Shall call Achilles, she shall call in vain. When, flush’d with slaughter, Hector comes to spread The purpled shore with mountains of the dead, Then shalt thou mourn the affront thy madness gave, Forced to deplore when impotent to save: Then rage in bitterness of soul to know This act has made the bravest Greek thy foe.”