Epeisodion 1
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
220
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.
225
Oh, answer! It is not right that I be disappointed by you in this request, at least, nor you by me.
230
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.
235
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.
240
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.
245
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?
250
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!
255
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
260
