Philoctetes
I did not mean him; there was one Thersites, who could never be content to speak once and briefly, even though no one wanted him to speak at all. Do you know if he is alive?
Neoptolemus
[445]
I never saw him, but I heard that he is still alive.
Philoctetes
He would be—no evil thing has ever been known to perish. No, the gods take excellent care of their kind. They find a strange joy in turning back from Hades all things criminal
[450]
and crooked, while they are always dispatching the just and the good from life. How am I to regard these doings? How can I praise them, when in the very act of praising the ways of the gods, I find that the gods are evil?
Neoptolemus
I, at least, son of Oetean Poeas, will be on my guard hereafter against Ilium
[455]
and the Atreids, and look on them only from afar. And where the worse man is stronger than the good, where nobility goes to ruin and the vile man dominates—among such men I will never make my friends. No, rocky Scyros shall suffice for me
[460]
from now on to make me delight in my home. Now to my ship! And you, son of Poeas, farewell—as best you can, farewell! May the gods free you of your disease, just as you wish! But we must be going, so that we
[465]
may set sail whenever the god permits our voyage.
Philoctetes
Are you setting out already, son?
Neoptolemus
Yes, since opportunity bids us watch near our ship for a fair wind, rather than from afar.
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Sophocles. The Philoctetes of Sophocles. Edited with introduction and notes by Sir Richard Jebb. Sir Richard Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1898.
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