Philoctetes
Sophocles
Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 4: The Philoctetes. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898.
- What did you do that was unworthy of you?
- I captured a man by disgraceful deceits and treachery.
- What man? Oh! Can you be planning something rash?
- Rash, no. But to Poeas’ son—
- What are you going to do? Suddenly a certain fear comes over me.
- —From whom I took this bow, back to him—
- Zeus! What will you say? Certainly you do not intend to give it back?
- Yes, I do, because disgracefully and unjustly I got hold of it.
- In the name of the gods, are you saying this to mock me?
- If it is mockery to speak the truth.
- What do you mean, Neoptolemus? What are you saying?
- Must I repeat the same words twice and three times?
- I would not have wished to hear them even once.
- Know for certain that I have nothing more to say.
- There is someone, I tell you, who will prevent your deed.
- What do you mean? Who will oppose me in this?
- The whole host of the Achaeans, and I for one.
- Wise though you were born, your threats are void of wisdom.
- And your words are not wise, nor is that which you want to do.
- And yet if they are just, they are better than wise.