Philoctetes

Sophocles

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

  1. be persuaded! I supplicate you at your knees, I am an infirm wretch, and lame! Do not leave me desolate like this, far from the paths of mankind! No, bring me safely to your own home, or to Euboea, Chalcodon’s seat;
  2. and from there it will be no long journey for me to Oeta and the Trachinian heights, and fair-flowing Spercheius, so that you may show me to my beloved father, though long I have feared that he may have departed me. For often
  3. did I summon him by means of those who came here, sending imploring prayers that he would himself send a ship and get me safely home. But either he is dead, or else, as I think is likely, my messengers thought my concerns of little account and hurried on their homeward voyage.
  4. Now, however, since in you I have found one who can be both an escort and a messenger, save me and show me mercy, keeping in mind that all human destiny is full of the fear and the danger that prosperity may be followed by its opposite. He who stands clear of trouble must beware of dangers,
  5. and when a man lives at ease, then it is that he must look most closely to his livelihood, lest it secretly suffer ruin.
Chorus
  1. Have pity, my king! He has told of a struggle with sufferings manifold and oppressive—may the like befall no friend of mine!
  2. And if, my king, you hate the hateful Atreids, then, turning their wrongdoing to this man’s gain,
  3. I would take him in your swift, well-rigged ship to the home for which he longs, and so escape the god’s just wrath.
Neoptolemus
  1. Though now as a casual spectator you are compliant,
  2. beware lest later, when filled with his disease by its constant company, you prove no longer constant to these sentiments.
Chorus
  1. That will not happen. You will never have just cause to rebuke me for that!