Note (18) — BOOK III.

18. Ajax or Orestes.) These cases are best illustrated by the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, which our author seems to have had in view. Ajax enraged to see Ulysses preferred to him in the competition for the arms of Achilles, falls into madness. He resolved to revenge this affront upon the whole army. And in the night ran into the fields, where their flocks and herds were grazing, murdered the shepherds and laid about him among the cattle, taking them for men; slew numbers of them, which he imagined to be Agamemnon, Menelaus, and others, that were accessary to his dishonour. Then bound and led prisoners to his tent many more oxen and sheep to be reserved for tortures, and flogged unmercifully a great ram for his adversary Ulysses, before he put him to death. Orestes was affected in the same manner. After the murder of his mother, he fancied himself haunted by the furies, and her amongst them. He is represented as terrified by their frightful looks, sometimes reasoning, sometimes beseeching, and at other times drawing his sword to fight them. In one of these fits, like Ajax, he falls upon the cattle. See Sophocl. Ajax flagell. et Euripid. Orest. et Iphigen. in Taur. Such are the figures presented to the imagination in this species of madness.