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

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

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

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

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

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

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load focus Notes (Sir Richard C. Jebb, 1932)
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load focus Greek (Francis Storr, 1913)
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