Oration 59
Imperial Dio Chrysostom Greek- (Odysseus.) I am afraid that my allies may prove to have formed this opinion of me to no purpose—that I am, forsooth, the best and wisest of the Greeks. And yet what kind of wisdom and prudence is this, by which a man is forced to toil more than the rest for the common safety and victory, when he might be one of the multitude and, while seeming no less excellent than the best in these matters, have an easier lot? But perhaps it is hard to find anything in the world so ambitious and avid of honour as a man is by nature. For it is the conspicuous men, the men who dare to grapple with greater enterprises, whom we nearly all admire and regard as men in the true sense. 2. It is this love of honour by which I too am led on to have an endless mass of troubles and to live more laboriously than any other man, ever expecting some fresh danger, and shrinking from undoing the renown that has accrued from my earlier deeds. So now, on an enterprise altogether perilous and difficult, I have come here to Lemnos, that I may bring Philoctetes and the bow of Heracles to my allies. For Helenus, son of Priam, the most skilled of the Phrygians in prophecy, when he happened to be taken prisoner, disclosed that without these the city could never be captured. 3. To the kings, indeed, I did not promise the deed, knowing the man's enmity—a man whom I myself was the cause of having been left behind, when he chanced to be bitten by a cruel and incurable viper. I did not suppose, then, that I could find any persuasion such as would ever make him gentle toward me; rather I expected to be killed by him at once. But afterward, when Athena exhorted me in my sleep, as she is wont, to go boldly against the man—for she would change my appearance and my voice, so that I might consort with him undetected—on this assurance I have come here, taking courage. 4. I have learned, too, that envoys have been secretly dispatched by the Phrygians, in the hope that they may somehow win Philoctetes over with gifts, and at the same time through his enmity toward us, and bring him and the bow into the city. With such a prize set before us, how can it be otherwise than that every man should be eager? For if a man fails in this enterprise, all his former labours seem to have been undergone for nothing. 5. Alas! the man is approaching. Here he is himself, the son of Poeas, plainly marked by his calamity, advancing with toil and difficulty. Oh, what a grievous and dreadful sight! For his very appearance is fearful from the disease, and his dress is strange: the hides of wild beasts cover him. But do you, lady Athena, defend me, and do not prove to have promised me deliverance in vain. (Philoctetes.) 6. (Ph.) With what purpose, whoever you may be, or with what daring, have you come to this destitute shelter? Have you come to plunder, or as a spy upon our misfortune? — (O.) No, indeed; you do not see in me a man of violence. — (O.) Yet you have not been accustomed to come here before. — (O.) No, I have not been accustomed to it; but may it prove that even now I have arrived in good season. — (Ph.) You seem to be describing great folly in this journey of yours. — (O.) Know well, then, that I have not come without a cause, and that I shall not prove to be a stranger to you. — 7. (Ph.) Whence, then? For it is fitting that I should learn this first. — (O.) Well, I am an Argive, one of those who sailed against Troy. — (Ph.) Whence? Say it again, that I may know more clearly. — (O.) Then you shall hear it a second time: I say that I am one of the Achaeans who marched against Ilium. — (Ph.) A fine thing indeed it was that you called yourself my friend, when you have shown yourself to be one of the Argives, who are my bitterest enemies. For their wrongdoing you shall this very instant pay the penalty. — (O.) But, in the gods' name, hold back from loosing your arrow! — (Ph.) It is not possible, if you are indeed a Greek, that you should not perish on this very day. — 8. (O.) But I have suffered such things at their hands as would justly make me a friend to you and an enemy to them. — (Ph.) And what is this so grievous thing that you have suffered? — (O.) Odysseus drove me into exile from the army. — (Ph.) And what had you done, that you met with this sentence? — (O.) I think you know Palamedes, the son of Nauplius. — (Ph.) Assuredly; he was no common man, nor of small worth, whether to the army or to its leaders, when he sailed with us. — (O.) Such was the man whom that common bane of the Greeks destroyed. — (Ph.) Did he prevail over him openly in fair fight, or by some treachery? — (O.) By bringing against him a charge of betraying the army to the sons of Priam. — (Ph.) And was it truly so, or did he suffer through a false accusation? — (O.) How could anything done by that man be done justly? — 9. (Ph.) O Odysseus, who has refrained from no atrocity, most cunning of men in word and deed alike, what a man you have now destroyed—one who was no less useful to the allies than, I suppose, you are, in finding out and contriving the noblest and wisest counsels! Just so, of course, you cast me out, when, on behalf of the common safety and victory, I met with this calamity, in pointing out the altar of Chryse, by sacrificing at which they were destined to overcome the enemy; otherwise the whole expedition was being made in vain. But how does the fate of Palamedes touch you? — 10. (O.) Know well that the evil came upon all his friends, and all have perished, save whoever was able to flee. So I too, sailing across this past night, alone reached safety here. So that I find myself in nearly as great need as you yourself. If, then, you have any device, and will join in our eagerness for the voyage home, you will both have done us a good service and will at the same time send a messenger to your own people at home about the troubles that beset you. — 11. (Ph.) But, you poor wretch, you have come for help to one who is in the same plight as yourself—to a man himself destitute and bereft of friends, cast out upon this shore, scantily and with difficulty procuring from this bow both his food and his clothing, as you see. For the clothing we had before has been worn away by time. But if, indeed, you are willing to share this life with us here, until some other deliverance falls to you from somewhere, we should not grudge it. Yet the sights within are loathsome, stranger—bandages soaked with discharge and other tokens of the disease; and I myself am no pleasant companion when the pain falls upon me. And yet with time the worst of the disease has abated; at the outset it was in no way endurable.