Philoctetes

Sophocles

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

  1. I am not sorry that I found you and have gained your friendship, since whoever knows how to render benefit for a benefit received must prove a friend more valuable than any possession. Please, do go inside.
Philoctetes
  1. Agreed, and I will bring you also.
  2. My sickness craves the comfort of your presence.Philoctetes and Neoptolemus enter the cave.
Chorus
  1. I have heard a rumor, but never seen with my eyes, how the man who once approached the bed of Zeus was bound upon a
  2. swift wheel by the almighty son of Cronus. But of no other mortal do I know, either by hearsay or by sight, that has encountered a doom so repugnant as this of Philoctetes. For though he had wronged no one by force or thievery,
  3. but conducted himself fairly towards the fair, he was left to perish so undeservedly. I truly marvel how—how in the world—as he listened in solitude to the breakers rushing around him,
  4. he kept his hold upon a life so full of grief.
Chorus
  1. Here, he alone was his own neighbor, powerless to walk, with no one in the land to be his companion while he suffered—no one to whom he could cry out a lament that would be answered
  2. for the plague that gnawed his flesh and drained his blood—no one to lull with healing herbs gathered from the nourishing earth the burning blood which oozed from the ulcers of his
  3. envenomed foot, whenever the torment attacked him. Instead he would then creep this way or that, stumbling like a child without his kind nurse, to any place from where his needs
  4. might be supplied, whenever the devouring anguish withdrew.