Sophocles Philoctetes 268

Philoctetes

O strangers!

Who can you be, and from what country, that you have put into this harborless and desolate land? What would I rightly say is your city or your ancestry? The fashion of your equipment is Greek, and most welcome to my

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sight; but it would please me to hear your voices. And do not shrink from me in fear, or be frightened by my savage looks. No, pity one so wretched and so lonely, a castaway, so friendless and so miserable. Speak to me, if indeed you have come as friends.

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Oh, answer! It is not right that I be disappointed by you in this request, at least, nor you by me.

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Neoptolemus

Well, know first, stranger, that we are Greeks, since you desire to learn this.

Philoctetes

O cherished sound! Ah, that I should truly be

greeted by such a man, after so long a time! What need, young man, has made you land here and brought you to this spot? What business? What wind so kind? Speak, tell me all, so that I may know who you are.

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Neoptolemus

My birthplace is the island Scyros, and I am sailing

homeward. I am the son of Achilles, by name Neoptolemus. Now you know everything.

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Philoctetes

O son of a father I loved, and of soil I cherished! Ward of aged Lycomedes, on what mission have you touched this shore? From where are you sailing?

Neoptolemus

Well, since you ask, it is from Ilium that I am now guiding my ship.

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Philoctetes

What? You were certainly not our shipmate at the beginning of the expedition there.

Neoptolemus

And did you have a part in that toil?

Philoctetes

Then you do not know who I am?

Neoptolemus

How should I know one whom I have never seen before?

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Philoctetes

Then you have not even heard my name, or any rumor of those sufferings under which I have been perishing?

Neoptolemus

Be sure that I know nothing of what you ask.

Philoctetes

How cursed I must be, how abhorred by the gods,

if not a word of my miserable condition has reached my homeland, or any Greek land at all! Instead those men, who against the gods’ laws cast me away, keep their secret and laugh, while my plague has ever flourished and grows worse!

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O my son, boy whose father was Achilles, here I am before you, the man of whom you have perhaps heard as lord of the bow of Heracles, Philoctetes the son of Poeas. I am he whom the two marshalls and the Cephallenian king

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shamelessly hurled to this solitude which you see, when I was wasting with a fierce disease, stricken by the savage bite of the murderous serpent. With that plague for my sole companion, boy, those men put me out

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here alone and left, after they landed here with their fleet from sea-washed Chryse . Delighted they were then, when they saw me asleep after much tossing on the waves, in the shelter of a cave upon the shore, and they abandoned me, first setting out a few rags, as though for an unfortunate beggar, and a bit of food, too—

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a small work of charity. But may they get what they gave me! Can you imagine, boy, what kind of awakening I had when they had gone, and I rose from sleep that day?—what stinging tears I wept, and what miseries I bewailed when I saw that the ships with which I had sailed

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were all gone, and that there was no man in the place, not one to help me, not one to ease the sickness that afflicted me, when looking all around me, I could find nothing at hand, save agony—but of that a ready store?

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So time passed for me, season by season, and alone in this narrow house, I had to attend to all my wants by my own resources. For my stomach’s needs this bow provided, bringing down doves on the wing. And whatever my string-sped arrow might strike,

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in pain I would crawl to it myself, dragging my wretched foot behind me. Or, again, if water had to be fetched, or, if when the frost had spread, as often happens in winter, a bit of firewood had to be broken, I would creep out in pain and

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manage it. Then fire would be lacking; but by rubbing stone hard on stone I would at last reveal the hidden spark which preserves me from day to day. Indeed, a roof over my head and a fire inside provides all that I want—except release from my disease.

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Come now, son, you must understand what sort of island this is. No mariner approaches it by choice, since there is no anchorage or port where he can find a gainful market or a kindly host. This is not a place to which prudent men voyage. But suppose that some one has put in against his will, for such things may often

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happen in the long course of a man’s life. These visitors, then, when they come, son, have compassionate words for me, and, perhaps moved by pity, they give me a little food or some clothing.

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But there is one thing that no one will do, whenever I mention it: take me home in safety. No, this is already the tenth year that I am wasted by misery from hunger and suffering, by feeding this gluttonous plague. This is what the Atreids and the forceful Odysseus have done to me, boy.

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May the gods on Olympus someday give them agonies as strong in requital for mine!

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Chorus

I believe that I, too, pity you, son of Poeas, as much as your former visitors.

Neoptolemus

And I myself attest your accusations,

for I know their truth through my own experience with the wickedness of the Atreids and the force of Odysseus.

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Philoctetes

What, do you also have a grievance against the accursed sons of Atreus, a cause for anger at some mistreatment?

Neoptolemus

If only I might one day be allowed to fulfill my heart’s rage by the deeds of my hand,

so that Mycenae might learn, and Sparta , that Scyros also is a mother of brave men!

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Philoctetes

Well said, son! Now what is the reason that you have come complaining against them with this fierce wrath?

Neoptolemus

I will tell you—and yet it is hard to tell—

the outrage that I suffered from them upon my arrival there. For when fate decreed that Achilles should die—

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Philoctetes

Ah, me! Tell me no more, until I first know this—is the son of Peleus dead?

Neoptolemus

Dead—not by a mortal hand, but by a god’s.

He was brought down, as men say, by the arrow of Phoebus.

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Philoctetes

Well, noble alike are the slayer and the slain. But I am at a loss to know, son, whether I should first inquire into the wrong done you, or mourn the dead.

Neoptolemus

Your own sorrows, I think, are enough

for you, unhappy man, without mourning for those of your neighbor.

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Philoctetes

You speak the truth. Therefore tell me again what happened to you, and how they wronged you.

Neoptolemus

They came for me in a ship elaborately ornamented, shining Odysseus, and he who fostered my father,

and said—whether truly or falsely, I do not know—that since my father had perished, fate now forbade that anyone but I should take the towers of Troy .
  Saying that this, my friend, was how things stood, they caused me no long delay before I set sail in haste,

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chiefly because of my yearning for the dead, that I might look upon him before burial, since I had never seen him. Then, besides, theirs was a fine promise, if by accompanying them I might sack the towers of Troy .
  It was now the second day of my voyage

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when, sped by breeze and oar, I approached bitter Sigeum. When I landed, straightaway the entire army thronged around me with greetings, vowing that they saw their lost Achilles once more alive.
  He, though, lay ready for burial, and I, unhappy,

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when I had wept for him, went before long to the Atreids, to friends, as it was reasonable to suppose,—and claimed my father’s arms and all else that had been his. O, their reply was bold and shameless! Seed of Achilles, you may take all else that was your father’s. But of those arms another man now is lord, the son of Laertes .

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The tears came quick to my eyes as I sprang up in passionate anger and said in my bitterness, Madman! Have you dared give my arms to another man in my place, without asking me? But Odysseus—for he chanced to be at hand—said, Yes, boy, they awarded them as was just, since it was I who saved the arms and their master by my presence at the crucial moment. Then immediately, in my fury, I began to lash at him with every kind of insult

and left not one unsaid, if he was indeed to rob me of my arms. At this point, stung by the abuse, though not given to anger, he answered,— You have not gone to where we have; instead you have been absent from where you were needed. And since your tongue is so arrogant, you will never sail back to Scyros with those arms in your possession. In that way rebuked, in that way insulted, I sail for home, deprived of what is my own by that worst offspring of a wicked line, Odysseus.

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And yet I do not blame him as much as I do those in power. For a city hangs wholly on its leaders, and so does an army, but when men shatter law and order, it is the lessons of their teachers that corrupt them. My tale is told in full. May he who hates the Atreids

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be as dear to the gods as he is to me!

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