Get it, then. What else do you want? PHILOKTETES Any arrows I may have left lying around. I cannot leave any for another man to find. NEOPTOLEMOS Is that your famous bow? PHILOKTETES Yes. I have never set it aside. NEOPTOLEMOS May I hold it? May I cradle it in my hands? PHILOKTETES Only you. Hold it, and take whatever is useful to you. NEOPTOLEMOS I would love to hold it, if that is no violation, if it is lawful. If not, let it be. PHILOKTETES You speak piously, child. It is lawful, for you alone have granted me the light of the sun that shines above us and the sight of Oeta, my beloved land, the sight of my father, and of my dear friends. You have taken me away from my enemies, who stood above me. Courage, boy. Hold this bow, then give it back to me, and proclaim to everyone that you alone could hold it, a merit won by strength of character. That is how I won it myself: for an act of kindness long ago. NEOPTOLEMOS I am glad I found you and became your friend. One who knows how to give and receive kindness is a friend worth more than any possession. Go inside. PHILOKTETES Come inside with me. My sickness desires to have you alongside as its helper. CHORUS I have heard the story, although I did not see it myself, of the one who stole up to Zeus's bed, where Hera slept; how Zeus caught him and chained him to a whirring fiery wheel. But I have seen or heard of no other man whom destiny treated with such enmity as it did Philoktetes, who killed no one, nor robbed, but lived justly, a fair man to all who treated him fairly, and who fell into evils he did not deserve. It amazes me that he, alone, listening to the rushing waves pounding on the shore, could cling to life when life brought him pain, and so many tears. He was crippled and had no one near him. He was made to suffer, and no one could ease his burden, answer his cries, mourn with him the savage, blood-poisoning illness that was devouring him. He had no neighbor to gather soft leaves to staunch the bleeding, hideous sore that ran, suppurating, maggoty, on his foot. He writhed and scrawled upon the hard ground, crying like a motherless child, to wherever he might find relief when the spirit-killing illness attacked him. He gathered no grain sown in holy earth, nor the food that living men enjoy, except when he shot his feathered arrows and filled his stomach with what he took. In ten years, he has had no succoring wine; he searched for puddles and drank from them instead. But now fortune has come with victory for him. He has found the son of a great man, who will himself be great, when this is over. Our lord will carry him over the seas, after these ten years, to his father's home in the land of the nymphs of Malia, by the banks of sweet-running Spercheios, where Herakles the archer ascended to Olympos, bronze-armored, engulfed in holy fire, there above the hills of Oeta. NEOPTOLEMOS Come on, then, if you want to. Why do you stand there, seized by silence?