Philoctetes

Sophocles

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

  1. these men in the future. For when the mind of men has once mothered wrongdoing, it trains those men to be wrongdoers in all else thereafter. And in you, too, I wonder at this. You should never yourself revisit Troy, and should prevent me from going there, seeing that those men have done you outrage
  2. by stripping you of your father’s arms when, in the suit for the weapons, they judged unhappy Ajax inferior to Odysseus. After that, will you go to fight at their side, and compel me to do the same? No, do not do it, son, but, as you swore to me, escort me home. You yourself remain in Scyros, and leave those evil men to their evil doom.
  3. So shall you win double thanks from me, as from your father, and you will not appear through your service to bad men to be like them in your nature.
Neoptolemus
  1. Your recommendation is reasonable, but nevertheless, I wish that you would put your trust in the gods and in my words,
  2. and sail from this land with me, your friend.
Philoctetes
  1. What! To the plains of Troy and to the abhorred son of Atreus, with this miserable foot?
Neoptolemus
  1. No, rather to those who will free you and your pus-filled limb from pain, and will save you from your sickness.
Philoctetes
  1. You giver of frightening advice, what have you said?
Neoptolemus
  1. I recognize what will be best in the end for you and for me.
Philoctetes
  1. Have you no shame before the gods for saying that?
Neoptolemus
  1. Why should a man be ashamed of benefiting his friends?