“How indeed,” Telamonian Ajax sneered, “Do you propose that Achilles’ arms and armor should go to you? The whole camp heard the voice of his mother proclaiming, ‘to the bravest.’ You’ve a way with words, and brains for solving puzzles, I’ll give you that. Aye, there are times it seems almost as if Pallas stands beside you, whispering clever stratagems in your ear. But don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’re never among the first of the throng to rush headlong into battle. And I notice because I am.”
“Rich words from you,” he laughed as his grandfather Autolykos would laugh when he was fleecing a mark, some country rube stinking of garlic. “Whose memory is short as Helen’s hemline is short. Do you forget already, O bulwark of the Achaeans, that it was I who stood beside you when great Achilles was felled by the foul dart of Paris, and we fought through a wall of Ilion’s best to recover his body? Was I lacking in valor then?”
“No, Ithakan, you distinguished yourself then. Shall the men to come sing songs of your greatest glory, hauling a corpse back to camp like a pack-donkey? Would that make you happy?”
“Not happier than when I fucked your whore.”
“You dare?”
“I dared with your mother too, before we left for Asia. The whore was better.”
“Villain!”
“You’re only now noticing? You should have asked your father; I fucked him as well. He was worse than your mother.”
And so it went, the great heroes exchanging barbs, until Ajax, red-faced and humiliated, stormed off to sulk in his tent, his final rejoinder, “Men say that your name comes from ὀδύσσομαι but I know the truth; you are ὀδύρομαι, for you shall be a cause of lamentation for all those who put their trust in you.”
To which he responded, “I fucked your little brother also!”
And then he went to collect his prize.
