Philoctetes

Sophocles

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

  1. You destroying fire, you utter monster, you hateful masterpiece of astounding wickedness! What treachery you have done to me! How thoroughly you have deceived me! And are you, you wretch, unashamed to look at me,
  2. the suppliant who turned to you for mercy? In taking my bow, you have robbed me of my life. Return it, I beg you, return it, I pray you, son! By the gods of your fathers, do not rob me of my life! Ah, me! He speaks to me no more.
  3. He looks away, as if he will never give it up! O you inlets and headlands, you wild creatures of the hills who have shared my life, and you jagged cliffs, to you—for you alone hear me—to you my accustomed companions,
  4. I bewail the treacherous treatment I have received from the son of Achilles. Although he swore to take me to my home, it is to Troy that he takes me. Although he gave me his right hand in pledge of his word, he has taken my bow, the sacred bow, once belonging to Zeus’s son Heracles, and he keeps it, and wants to show it to the Argives as his own.