Philoctetes

Sophocles

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

  1. The tears came quick to my eyes as I sprang up in passionate anger and said in my bitterness, Madman! Have you dared give my arms to another man in my place, without asking me? But Odysseus—for he chanced to be at hand—said, Yes, boy, they awarded them as was just, since it was I who saved the arms and their master by my presence at the crucial moment. Then immediately, in my fury, I began to lash at him with every kind of insult
  2. and left not one unsaid, if he was indeed to rob me of my arms. At this point, stung by the abuse, though not given to anger, he answered,—You have not gone to where we have; instead you have been absent from where you were needed. And since your tongue is so arrogant, you will never sail back to Scyros with those arms in your possession. In that way rebuked, in that way insulted, I sail for home, deprived of what is my own by that worst offspring of a wicked line, Odysseus.
  3. And yet I do not blame him as much as I do those in power. For a city hangs wholly on its leaders, and so does an army, but when men shatter law and order, it is the lessons of their teachers that corrupt them. My tale is told in full. May he who hates the Atreids
  4. be as dear to the gods as he is to me!