Euripides, Rhesus
E. P. Coleridge, Ed.

Rhesus
Alone I will face the foe, Hector. But if you are ashamed, after all your previous toil, [490] to have no share in firing their ships' prows, place me face to face with Achilles and his army.

Hector
Against that man you cannot range your eager spear.

Rhesus
Why, it was surely said he sailed to Ilium.

Hector
He sailed and he is here; but he is angry [495] and takes no part with the other chieftains in the battle.

Rhesus
Who next to him has won a name in their army?

Hector
Aias and the son of Tydeus are, I take it, in no way his inferiors; there is Odysseus, a wheedling rascal, but bold enough indeed, [500] and of all men he has wrought most outrage on this country. For he came by night to Athena's shrine and stole her image and took it to the Argive ships; next he came inside our battlements, clad as a vagrant in a beggar's garb, and loudly did he curse [505] the Argives, sent as a spy to Ilium; and then went out again, when he had slain the sentinels and warders at the gate. He is always to be found lurking in ambush about the altar of Thymbrean Apollo near the city. In him we have a troubling pest to wrestle with.

Rhesus
[510] No brave man thinks it right to kill his foe in secret, but to meet him face to face. If I can catch this fellow alive, who, as you say, sits in stealthy ambush and plots his mischief, I will impale him at the outlet of the gates [515] and set him up for winged vultures to make their meal upon. This is the death he ought to die, pirate and temple-robber that he is.

Hector
To your quarters now, for it is night. For you I will myself point out a spot where your army [520] can watch this night apart from our array. Our password is “Phoebus”, if perhaps there should be need of it; hear and remember it, and tell it to the Thracian army. You must advance in front of our ranks and keep a watchful guard, and receive Dolon, [525] who went to spy on the ships, for he, if he is safe, is even now approaching the camp of Troy.