Philoctetes
Sophocles
Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 4: The Philoctetes. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898.
- What ails you? I do not know.
- How could you not know? Oh, oh!
- Yes, terrible is the burden of your disease.
- Terrible beyond telling! Oh, pity me!
- What shall I do?
- Do not betray me because of fear. This plague comes only now and then,—perhaps when she has been sated with her roamings elsewhere.
- Ah, poor wretch! Poor man, truly for all your sufferings! Shall I support you, or somehow offer a helping hand?
- No, no. But take this bow of mine—as you earlier asked of me—and keep it in your care and safe
- until this present bout with my disease is past. For indeed sleep takes me as soon as this pain passes away, nor can it cease before then. But you must allow me to sleep in peace. And if
- those men come in the meantime, then by the gods I forbid you willingly or unwillingly, or by any skilled trickery, to give up this bow to them, lest you bring destruction at once on yourself and on me, who am your suppliant.
- Have no fears as to my caution. The bow shall pass