by Sophocles
a long way in pain seeing
nothing moored in the sea out there.
PHILOKTETES—in rags, foot wrapped in filthy bandages, bow in hand—is on them . . .
PHILOKTETES
Strangers!
Who? From where? What brings you 240
rowing ashore
to this desolate island? And no harbor!?
What is your country? Who are your people?
Dressed like Greeks. I like that
more than anything.
Speak! It’s OK, don’t let the wild look of me
scare you off. Don’t panic. Have pity
on a lonely miserable man,
say something if you really come as friends—
just answer! 250
It wouldn’t be right,
us not exchanging words with one another.
NEOPTOLEMOS
Since you ask, sir, the first thing
you should know is: we’re Greeks.
PHILOKTETES
O music to the ears! After so long
to hear Greek from such as you!
Dear boy
what brought you to this place?
This very spot! What necessity? What urge?
What most 260
merciful wind pushed you this way?
Tell me everything so I can know
who you are.
NEOPTOLEMOS
I’m sailing home to the island of Skyros.
I am Neoptolemos, son of Achilles.
Now you know everything.
PHILOKTETES
O my son of a beloved father,
a beloved land,
brought up by your grandfather Lykomedes—
what’s your mission here? Where are you coming from? 270
NEOPTOLEMOS
Right now I’m sailing from Troy.
PHILOKTETES
O? How so? For sure you weren’t with us
when we first set sail for Troy.
NEOPTOLEMOS
You!? Were actually part of that!
PHILOKTETES
My boy, I’m standing here. You don’t know me!?
NEOPTOLEMOS
Know you? How? I’ve never seen you before.
PHILOKTETES
Never heard my name? No word
of the miseries killing me to death?
NEOPTOLEMOS
Nothing. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
PHILOKTETES
I’m lost! The gods hate me! 280
Not one word of me abandoned here
has reached my home. No word
to Greeks anywhere out there!
The men who brought me here
in silence, in secret, make
mockery of me
while my disease
flourishes its worst, and spreads.
O my boy . . . Achilles’ son . . .
I’m one you must have heard of! 290
the master of Herakles’ bow!
Philoktetes, son of Poias!
whom those two commanders and Odysseus
tricked and dumped
in this emptiness to waste away
with this vicious sickness,
venom-stricken by a vicious serpent.
Sickness I was left alone with.
The fleet had put in here
having left sea-locked Chryse-. 300
They’d set me ashore. From rocking
on the stormy waters I’d fallen exhausted,
they were glad to see,
asleep under an arch of rock. They left
some rags good enough for a beggar
and a little food. Me too they left
and may the gods give them the same.
Can you feel, son, how I felt, waking
to nobody here?
I burst into tears. 310
Can you feel how I felt cursing myself
seeing the very ships I’d sailed on
gone! and on the island
nobody, not one human being
to give me a hand when I went down
in pain? All I saw
was pain. Plenty of it.
Time passed me by. Season after season
cramped alone in my cave, I made do
myself. Had to. For something to eat 320
this bow knocked down fluttering doves.
The bowstring, as I released it, hummed!
. . . then
whatever I’d hit I had to go after,
step & drag,
hauling this goddam foot.
Had to get water too. And winters
with frost, the water frozen,
step & drag, get
firewood to cut up. 330
No fire, none, but striking
stone on stone
I’d make the secret spark
leap up, out of darkness!
And this is what saved me.
A roof overhead, fire,
it’s all I need—except
release from this disease.
Young man, I’ll tell you something
about this place. No sailor 340
drops by on purpose—there’s no harbor,
no port to trade in, no ‘entertainment.’
No man in his right mind comes here.
Well, suppose some do. A lot happens
in the course of a lifetime. Then,
my boy, they feel sorry for me,
or so they say. And give me food
and clothing. But what they won’t do,
when I can bring myself to mention it,
is take me home. 350
Ten miserable years now
I’m rotting away, feeding
this disease
it can’t get enough of me!
This the sons of Atreus and ruthless Odysseus
did to me.
May the Gods of Above give them what I got.
LEADER
I too feel for you, son of Poias,
much as those others did.
NEOPTOLEMOS
And I can testify to the truth of what you say. 360
I know, having been overridden
by the sons of Atreus—and the brutish Odysseus.
PHILOKTETES
You too? Have a grudge against those damned
sons of Atreus? On what grounds?
NEOPTOLEMOS
O if only my anger might find its hands!
Mycenaeans and Spartans alike would know
Skyros, too, raises great warriors.
PHILOKTETES
You said it, boy! But what is it
you in your anger go after them for?
NEOPTOLEMOS
Sir, I will tell you—gods it’s hard 370
to talk about! but when I got to Troy
they humiliated me. Because when
fate gripped Achilles, and made him die . . .
PHILOKTETES
Wait! Enough! Let me get this straight.
He’s dead? Achilles!?
NEOPTOLEMOS
Dead. Killed not by a man but a god.
An arrow from Apollo.
PHILOKTETES
No! . . . Noble killer, noble killed.
Where now should I begin? Ask how
they wronged you? Or mourn the dead? 380
NEOPTOLEMOS
You have enough to do mourning yourself,
poor man. No need to mourn others.
PHILOKTETES
True enough. Well go on then. Tell me
exactly how they insulted you.
NEOPTOLEMOS
They came for me in a ship, the prow
all decked out, colors flying—
the great Odysseus, and Phoinix
who’d raised my father from infancy—
saying (true or not, I don’t know)
since my father was dead, it was fated 390
no one could capture Troy but me.
That was their story.
It was all they needed to say.
I didn
’t wait to hear any more, but got myself
ready in a hurry. I wanted so to see my father
unburied. In all my life I’d never seen him
alive! Then too, they promised me that
when I got there, I alone could sack Troy.
Second day out, rowing along
with a following wind 400
we landed at still painful Sigeion.
Soon as we hit shore, soldiers
crowded round, all swearing that
in me the dead Achilles lived again.
But he, he was dead. I wept for him, I felt
terrible. Then I went to the sons of Atreus,
figuring them as friends—to claim my father’s arms
and whatever else he’d left. And, well . . .
they had the nerve to say: “Son of Achilles
take everything else of his, but those arms 410
belong to another man. The son of Laertes.”
I choked up with rage and grief:
“You dared give away my arms
without so much as asking me?”
Then Odysseus—standing right there!—
he said: “That’s right, boy. I saved them
and the remains of their owner.”
I called him everything under the sun
I was so mad I, I
didn’tleaveanythingout, no, what with 420
him thinking he could steal my arms!
And I got to him. He doesn’t usually
get mad, but, you know, he did, he said:
“Your duty was here. But you weren’t.
Now your mouth spits such insolence
you’ll never take those arms back to Skyros.”
Bawled out, disrespected, I sail home now—
robbed of what I had coming to me
by the sleaziest of a sleazy breed: Odysseus.
Even so, I don’t blame him so much as the sons 430
of Atreus. An army, like a city, depends
completely on its leaders. When men trample on
others’ rights, they get that from their leaders.
Anyway. That’s my story. May the gods bless
any enemy of the sons of Atreus. I do.
CHORUS
Goddess of Mountains,
Bountiful Earth,
Mother of Zeus himself,
you through whom flows
Paktolos’ great rush 440
of gold dust
Wondrous Mother
there too I called on you
that day the sons of Atreus
puffed up with arrogance
piled insults on this man,
giving his father’s revered armor
to that son of Laertes
I prayed you then—now
hear me 450
Dread Mother who rides
lions that slaughter bulls
PHILOKTETES
Friends, the grief you’ve brought with you
rings true.
Your story tells my story. In it I see
the machinations of the sons of Atreus
and Odysseus. That one will talk up
any shady agenda—do anything for
any unconscionable end. Nothing new
in that. What’s strange is how Aias 460
if he was there, could put up with this.
NEOPTOLEMOS
My friend . . . he wasn’t! If he had been alive
they would never have robbed me like that.
PHILOKTETES
Him too!? Dead?
NEOPTOLEMOS
Think of him as gone . . . out, from the world of light.
PHILOKTETES
It can’t be! And yet Diomedes and Odysseus,
the bastard Sisyphos begot then sold to Laertes—
the ones who should be dead—aren’t!?
NEOPTOLEMOS
Those ones? Believe it, right now they’re riding
high in the Greek army. 470
PHILOKTETES
What of my friend, the old and honest Nestor of Pylos?
Alive still? He’s the one
could baffle their schemes with wise advice.
NEOPTOLEMOS
It’s no longer in him. He lost his son
Antilochos, who cared for him.
PHILOKTETES
Damn! Those two you mention, they’re
the last ones I want to hear are dead.
What’s to be our outlook on life
when they’re dead, and Odysseus
who should be dead, isn’t! 480
NEOPTOLEMOS
He’s a cagey wrestler, Philoktetes, yet
even clever moves may be upended.
PHILOKTETES
Gods Above! where was Patroklos
he didn’t help you out?
He was your father’s dearest friend.
NEOPTOLEMOS
Dead. Him too. The short of it
is: war doesn’t single out evil men
but in general kills the good.
PHILOKTETES
I’ll vouch for that. Speaking of which,
how goes the worthless one 490
with the quick, nasty tongue?
NEOPTOLEMOS
That would be Odysseus?
PHILOKTETES
Not him. Thersites, that one.
We had no way, ever, to shut him up
though everyone tried. He still alive?
NEOPTOLEMOS
I haven’t seen him myself. I heard he is.
PHILOKTETES
He would be. Nothing evil ever dies.
The gods swaddle it up. They take
some kind of pleasure keeping
the slick smooth ones out of Hades, 500
yet send the just and the good away,
down there forever. What
can I make of this? How can I
go along with them when,
while praising all things divine,
I see the gods are evil?
NEOPTOLEMOS
As for me, O son of an Oitan father,
I’ll be steering clear of Troy, keeping
my distance from the sons of Atreus.
Where the worst men overpower the best, 510
where the good die, while cowards rule,
I won’t ever put up with such men.
From now on it’s rockbound Skyros
for me. I will live my life
happily, at home . . .
(pause; then, abruptly . . .)
Well! Got to get back to the ship!
Good-bye son of Poias. Good luck
with the gods!
Here’s hoping they cure you
just as you wish! 520
(to sailors, all business)
Let’s get going. We should be set to sail
the moment the heavens permit.
PHILOKTETES
Already!? Going?
NEOPTOLEMOS
Yes. We need to be aboard
ready to sail when the wind shifts.
PHILOKTETES
My son, I beg you, in the name of
your father your mother your own
precious home—don’t abandon me here
alone, helpless, living in the misery
you see, and more you’ve only heard of! 530
I won’t be in your way!
It puts you out
I know, a cargo like me, but put up with it
anyway. You’re noble, you despise meanness,
to you decency is honorable. But leave me
here? your name will be covered with shame!
My son, the glory’s all yours if you
return me alive to Oita. Do it, it won’t take
hardly a day, stow me wherever—
in the hold, by the prow, the stern— 540
wherever’s least noxious to the crew.
O say you will! My boy, by the grace of Zeus
look at me! on my knees, sick as I am, helpless,
a m
iserable cripple! Don’t leave me outcast
here, where human footsteps are unheard-of.
Give me safe passage to your own homeland
or Chalkedon in Euboea. From there it’s not
far to Oita, to rugged Trakhis, to the gorgeous
rolling Sperkheios—you can present me
to my most loving father. For a long time 550
now, I’ve been afraid he’s passed on.
I kept sending messages with those
who happened through, begging him
come alone with a ship. Take me home!
But maybe he’s dead. Or the messengers
thought no more of it, and hurried
their own way home.
You now, you’re not just
a messenger, you’re my escort—you take me.
Have mercy! Save me! You see how we all 560
live on the edge, with disaster a step away.
And the man who’s doing well, he above all
should watch out for what just like that
will destroy his life.
CHORUS
(severally)
Sir, pity him.
He’s told all
the sufferings he has struggled with,
not to be wished on any friend of mine.
Sir, if you hate the hateful sons of Atreus—
if it were me I’d turn 570
their evils to his advantage—
take him aboard your swift, well-rigged ship
to the home he’s homesick for,
and escape the wrath of the gods.
NEOPTOLEMOS
Careful.
It’s easy to be easy-going . . . now. Yet
when you’ve lived awhile with his disease
you may disown your own words.
LEADER
Never. You will never, with justice,
accuse me of that. 580
NEOPTOLEMOS
I’d be ashamed if you seemed readier
than me to help him out. But if
that’s what you want, let’s sail. Quickly!
We should get a move on. The ship
won’t turn him away. Just pray
the gods get us safely out of here,
wherever we’re going.
PHILOKTETES
O glorious day! My dear friend! kind
sailors! if only I could do something
to prove how grateful I am to you! 590
Let’s go, my boy—after we say good-bye
to the home that’s not a home, inside.
You’ll know then how I lived, and what
heart it took to survive. Just seeing it
anyone else would’ve given up. Out of
necessity, in time, I learned to live with it.