Philoctetes

Sophocles

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

  1. in their place he should have been announced as dead?
Neoptolemus
  1. The man is a clever wrestler. But even clever schemes, Philoctetes, are often blocked.
Philoctetes
  1. Now, by the gods, tell me—where was Patroclus when you needed him, he whom your father loved beyond all others?
Neoptolemus
  1. He, too, was dead. And in a brief maxim I would teach you this: War takes no evil man by choice, but always the good men.