Philoctetes

Sophocles

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

  1. this is his means of sustenance—a wretch wretchedly shooting prey with his feathered shafts—and that no one comes near to him to heal his misery.
Chorus
  1. For my part, I pity him when I think how,
  2. with no one to care for him, and seeing no companion’s face, but suffering eternally alone, he is plagued by fierce disease and bewildered by each need as it arises.
  3. How, how does he endure his bitter fate? Ah, contrivances of the gods! Ah, unhappy tribes of mortals, whose life-portion exceeds due measure!
Chorus
  1. That man—inferior in no way, probably, to any man belonging to the oldest families—lies alone without companions and stripped of all life’s gifts
  2. among the dappled or shaggy beasts. He is a man to be pitied for his torments and his hunger alike, enduring anguish that has no cure. But to his bitter cries the mountain nymph, babbling Echo, coming from afar,
  3. gives answer.
Neoptolemus
  1. No part of this is a marvel to me. God-sent—if a man such as I may judge—are both those sufferings which attacked him from savage Chryse,
  2. and those with which he now toils untended. Surely he toils by the plan of some god so that he may not bend against Troy the invincible arrows divine, until the time be fulfilled at which, men say,
  3. by those arrows Troy is fated to fall.
Chorus
  1. Hush,boy!