Philoctetes
Sophocles
Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 4: The Philoctetes. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898.
- You are so resolved?
- More firmly, believe me, than words can say.
- Well, I could have wished that you had listened to my words, but if nothing that I say will help,then I am finished.
- Yes, all your pleas will be in vain. You will never gain my mind’s good will, since first you fraudulently seized my means of life and robbed me of it, and then you have come here to admonish me, you most hateful descendant of so noble a father!
- Ruin seize you all, the Atreids first, and next the son of Laertes, and you!
- Speak no more curses, and instead receive these weapons from my hand.
- What did you say? Am I being tricked a second time?
- No, I swear it by the pure majesty of Zeus most high!
- O welcome words—if your words are true!
- The deed will soon make it plain. Come, stretch out your right hand and be master of your bow!As he hands the bow and arrows to Philoctetes, Odysseus suddenly appears.
- But I forbid it, as the gods are my witnesses, in the name of the Atreids and the entire army!