Philoctetes
Sophocles
Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 4: The Philoctetes. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898.
- It seems that you have come to me, friends, well commended by a grief that matches my own.
- Your story is in harmony with mine, so that I can recognize the work of the Atreids and of Odysseus. For well I know that he would put his tongue to any base tale and to any mischief-making, if thereby he could hope to accomplish something criminal in the end.
- No, that is not at all a wonder to me, but rather that the elder Ajax, if he was there, could bear to see this.
- Ah, friend, he was no longer alive—I would never have been plundered like that while he lived.
- What do you say? Is he, too, dead and gone?
- Think of him as of one who sees the sun’s light no more.
- Oh, no! But the son of Tydeus, and Sisyphus’ offspring that was bought by Laertes—they will not die, since they do not deserve to live!
- No, indeed, be sure of it. On the contrary, they prosper now
- —yes, and greatly—in the Argive army.
- And what of my brave old friend, Nestor of Pylos—is he not alive? He often checked the crimes of those two, if not others, by his sage counsels.
- He has his own troubles now, since Antilochus,