Philoctetes

Sophocles

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

  1. One is a crewman of your ship, the other a stranger. Go in after you hear their report.
Enter the Merchant, on the spectators’ left, accompanied by a Sailor.
Merchant
  1. Son of Achilles, I asked my companion here, when he was guarding your ship with two others, to tell me where you might be found,
  2. since I have chanced upon you unexpectedly by the good fortune of coming to anchor off this very coast. With no great company I am homeward bound on my trader’s voyage from Ilium to Peparethus with its cluster-laden vines, but when I heard that the sailors
  3. were all of your crew, I resolved not to continue my voyage in silence, without first giving you my news and getting the due reward. You know nothing, I suspect, of your own affairs: the new designs the Greeks