Philoctetes
Sophocles
Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 4: The Philoctetes. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898.
- Well said, son! Now what is the reason that you have come complaining against them with this fierce wrath?
- I will tell you—and yet it is hard to tell—
- the outrage that I suffered from them upon my arrival there. For when fate decreed that Achilles should die—
- Ah, me! Tell me no more, until I first know this—is the son of Peleus dead?
- Dead—not by a mortal hand, but by a god’s.
- He was brought down, as men say, by the arrow of Phoebus.
- Well, noble alike are the slayer and the slain. But I am at a loss to know, son, whether I should first inquire into the wrong done you, or mourn the dead.
- Your own sorrows, I think, are enough
- for you, unhappy man, without mourning for those of your neighbor.
- You speak the truth. Therefore tell me again what happened to you, and how they wronged you.
- They came for me in a ship elaborately ornamented, shining Odysseus, and he who fostered my father,