Philoctetes

Sophocles

Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 4: The Philoctetes. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898.

  1. Now you are handled by another, a man of craftiness; you see the shameless deceptions and the face of that hated enemy by whom countless wrongs, springing from shameless designs, have been contrived against me. O Zeus!
Chorus
  1. A man must always assert what is right. But, when he has done so, he must not let loose malignant, stinging taunts. The man was the sole representative of the whole army, and at their mandate
  2. he achieved a universal benefit for his friends.
Philoctetes
  1. Ah, my winged prey, and you tribes of bright-eyed creatures held by this place in its upland pastures, leap no more
  2. in flight from your lairs, for I do not grasp in my hands those shafts which were once my strength—but now, gone, are my undoing! Roam at will now; the place has no more terrors—for you!
  3. The time is ripe for you to take blood for blood, to sate yourselves to your heart’s desire on my discolored flesh! Soon I will leave life, for from what source can I find the means to live? Who can feed, as I will have to,
  4. on the winds, when he no longer owns any of the bounty that the life-giving earth supplies?
Chorus
  1. In the name of the gods, if you have any reverence for a friend who approaches you in all kindness, approach him!
  2. But know this, and know it well: it is in your power to escape this plague. Cruel is it that you feed it with your own flesh, and that there is no way for you to learn to endure the countless torments that dwell with it.
Philoctetes
  1. Again, again, you have recalled the old agony to my thoughts—kindest though you are of all who have visited before! Why have you ruined me? What have you done to me?
Chorus
  1. What do you mean?