Philoctetes
Sophocles
Sophocles the plays and fragments, Part 4: The Philoctetes. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse, Sir, translator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898.
- Now, I say. You must obey.
- Ah, misery! Clearly, then, my father sired me to be a slave and no free man.
- Not so, but to be the peer of the best and bravest, with whom you are destined to take Troy and force it to the ground.
- No, never—even if I must suffer every torment,
- so long as I have this island’s steep cliffs beneath me!
- What do you plan to do?
- Throw myself now from the rock and shatter my head on the rocks below!
- Quick, seize him, both of you! Do not give him the chance!
- O my arms, what shames you suffer for lack of your cherished
- bow, now that you are made that man’s bound quarry! And you, who cannot think one healthy or one noble thought, how stealthily you have once more ambushed and trapped me, taking this boy for your screen, because he was a stranger to me. He is too good for your company, but worthy of mine,
- since he had no thought but to execute his orders, and he already shows remorse for his own errors and for the wrongs done me. But your corrupt mind, always on the lookout from some position of ambush, trained him well—unsuited and unwilling though he was—