Philoctetes

Sophocles

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

  1. What is this new delirium? Why do you gaze at the dome above us?
Philoctetes
  1. Let me go, let me go!
Neoptolemus
  1. Where will you go, if I do so?
Philoctetes
  1. Let me go, I say!
Neoptolemus
  1. I will not.
Philoctetes
  1. You will kill me, if you touch me further.
Neoptolemus
  1. There, then, I release you—if in fact you believe it is for the better.
Philoctetes
  1. Wide Earth, embrace me now on the verge of death!
  2. This pain no longer lets me stand up.
Neoptolemus
  1. Sleep, I think, will take him before long. See, his head sinks backward. Yes, a sweat runs over his whole body, and a dark, hemorrhaging vein has burst from his heel.
  2. Come, friends, let us leave him in quietness, so that he may fall asleep.