Philoctetes

Sophocles

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

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
Neoptolemus
  1. Ah, friend, he was no longer alive—I would never have been plundered like that while he lived.
Philoctetes
  1. What do you say? Is he, too, dead and gone?