• TOC
  
• 1. the base story of Philoctetes, traditionally
  
• 2. some background information about various sources that report about Philoctetes and who wrote plays about him
• 3. Dio Chrysostomus' 52nd discourse, which discusses each of the three plays called Philoctetes , one by Aeschylus, one by Euripides, and the one we still have, Sophocles
• 4. Discuss some themes in Sophocles' Philoctetes
  


• What do we 'know' about Philoctetes? First, from before or around the time of Sophocles
  
•  Homer refers to Philoctetes three times, most informatively at Iliad 2.716‑726
  
• A few more details are available from the Epic Cycle: Cypria, Little Iliad, and Iliupersis include some references to Philoctetes.
•  Heracles gave Philoctetes the bow and arrows which he had gotten from Apollo.
  
• Philoctetes was one of Helen's suitors and when the Greeks got to the island of Chryse, he went to an altar there to sacrifice.
  
• He was bitten by a snake. The wound stank so badly and he screamed so much that the Greeks left him there.
• Odysseus went on a night raid and captured the Trojan prophet Helenus.
• Helenus said that Troy would only be taken if Philoctetes' bow was used and Achilles' son Neoptolemus were to help. 
  
• Diomedes went to get Philoctetes, and Odysseus went to get Neoptolemus.
• Philoctetes was healed.
• He shot Paris.
• He and Neoptolemus aided in taking Troy.
  
• Aristotle Poetics 1459a37ff.reports that several tragedies could be written from the Little Iliad, including a Philoctetes, while only one each could be written from the Iliad and the Odyssey.
  
• From Proclus' epitome of the Little Iliad
  
• Stobaeus reports that Euphorion (presumably Aeschylus' son, who was also a tragedian) wrote a play Philoctetes: we have a single short fragment of that play via Stobaeus.
  
• Philocles (5th c. BCE, nephew of Aeschylus: wrote maybe 100 tragedies) and Achaeus (of Eretria, not an Athenian, born 484 BCE) are reported by Dio Chrysostomus (orations 52 and 59 reportedly) and the Suda to have also written tragedies titled Philoctetes.
• Strattis the comedian wrote a play titled Philoctetes in the 5th c. of which we have one fragment, something about a treasure on a dungheap.

• Sophocles' Philoctetes
• First, reflect on who played what characters: the same actor has to have played Odysseus, the Trader, and Heracles
• are they really separate characters?
• or are they all Odysseus in disguise: could the actor have "let the mask slip"? as Meineck suggests, based on audience reactions to his productions!!
• interestingly, the trader relates the story of the Greeks who set out to bring back Philoctetes, and it is one of the traditional versions that Sophocles is innovating upon, the one where Odysseus and Diomedes go out!
  
• Philoctetes rages against the Achaean leaders and withholds his help, help that is crucial for the war: does this remind us of anyone? 1197
  
• Philoctetes is stubborn and inflexible: does this remind us of anyone?
• 1316 Neoptolemus to Philoctetes: "Mortals must accept whatever the gods give: But when they steep themselves in self-infliced misery, / as you do, no one will ever feel remorse or pity./ Your wildness has made you immovable;/You won't take advice..." 1385-3 also shows him stubborn as a mule, clinging to his rage and refusing to bend
  
• Read 310-316: is his plight so different from that of the army at Troy?
• then read 1422-1428, about Neoptolemus and Philoctetes
  
• All this language about the "nature" of Neoptolemus: what is it?
• lines 50, 79, 88-99, 120 (shame as good part of one's nature), and the peripateia at 895-910 (especially 902-3)
• 1310 "You have shown your true nature, my boy...You are the son of Achilles"
  
• see Iliad 9.317-18 (in Lombardo's translation)
• Odysseus' lack of a nature: 1049 "I am who I am required to be"
• is it virtuous flexibility, or practicality, or just what people have to do to get by in this world?
  
• The language of obedience: obey orders!
  
• lines 50-53,
  
• The language of persuasion:
• lines 97-98, 102-3, 612, 623
• Coupled with the conflict of wisdom/intellect with justice:
• 1244-46
  
• The language of compassion/mercy/kindness
• 169, 177, 508, 669-675, 686
  
• duty/virtue of helping strangers: 525
• Is there something like utilitarianism in the play?
  
• lines 66, 1140
• What of gods?
• Athena is there.
• BUT ALSO Hermes, the trickster god, the deceiver: lines 134
• line 452! Philoctetes says "How can I praise the gods when their ways are so evil?" !!!
• and ZEUS, the one behind it all, who has declared what must happen:
• lines 988-97
• as an aside, there is also a fascinating reference to the possibility that non-Greek speakers frequented Lemnos: 234-5
• and the reference to Thersites, my hero! 438-445 (he is not cast in a good light, but that's no surprise)
• And the play closes at 1440 with a horrific hint at what the Greeks will do, Neoptolemus in particular: they will outrage the gods when they take Troy: they will not refrain from the temples and the altars as Heracles' warns them to. The whole audience knows that.

Long after Sophocles
but note that these authors had access to many more ancient works than we do, so they may hold important and interesting information from Sophocles' own time and before.

• Lucius Accius, 1st c. BCE, a roman Tragedian writing in Latin, translating/riffing mostly on Aeschylus, included references to Philoctetes in his Myrmidons, Achilles, and Epinausimache.
  
• Philoctetes: Mythology:
• Hyginus Fabulae "Stories" 14.4, 36, 81, 97, 102, 112, 114, 257
  
• Hyginus, 64BCE-17CE was a freedman of Emperor Augustus
• He wrote many works: all we have left are his Fabulae and a work on 'Poetic Astronomy'
• The Fabulae are very useful, but they are really mere dilettantish efforts with no great intelligence: they are by and large, with some exceptions, a compendium of what everyone familiar with mythology would know at the time, truly common knowledge.
• From Wikipedia article 'Gaius Julius Hyginus': HOW AND WHY WE STILL HAVE THIS WORK OF HYGINUS: a not unusual story about why we have some work or other from antiquity:
  
• "In fact the text of the Fabulae was all but lost: a single surviving manuscript from the abbey of Freising,[4] in a Beneventan script datable c. 900, formed the material for the first printed edition, negligently and uncritically[5] transcribed by Jacob Micyllus, 1535, who may have supplied it with the title we know it by. In the course of printing, following the usual practice, by which the manuscripts printed in the 15th and 16th centuries have rarely survived their treatment at the printshop, the manuscript was pulled apart: only two small fragments of it have turned up, significantly as stiffening in book bindings.[6] Another fragmentary text, dating from the 5th century is in the Vatican Library.[7]
      Among Hyginus' sources are the scholia on Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica, which were dated to about the time of Tiberius by Apollonius' editor R. Merkel, in the preface to his edition of Apollonius (Leipzig, 1854).[8]"
  
•  Unfortunately, it's not easy to find a translation of the Scholia in Apollonium Rhodium on the Argonautica. Gotta know Greek for that.
  
• Philostratus the Younger (3rd c. CE) has a very short work on Philoctetes that is about on the same level as Hyginus.
• Dio Chrysostomus (1st c. CE), 52nd discourse, (his 59th discourse has a dramatic treatment of Philoctetes and Odysseus which the Loeb seems to say is derived from Euripides' Philoctetes).
• Translation taken from the link above: quoted here so we can go thru it quickly with boldfacing:
• The Fifty-second Discourse:
  On Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides
  or The Bow of Philoctetes
  
  Having risen about the first hour of the day, both on account of the feeble state of my health and also on account of the air, which was rather chilly because of the early hour and very much like autumn, though it was mid-summer, I made my toilet and performed my devotions. I next got into my carriage and made the round of the race-course several times, my team moving along as gently and comfortably as possible. After that I took a stroll and then rested a bit. Next, after a rub-down and bath and a light breakfast,​a I fell to reading certain tragedies.
  
  2 These tragedies were the work of topmost artists, I may say, Aeschylus and Sophocles and Euripides, all dealing with the same theme, which was the theft — or should I say the seizure? — of the bow of Philoctetes. However that may be, Philoctetes was portrayed as being deprived of his weapons by Odysseus and as being carried off to Troy along with them, for the most part willingly, though in some measure also yielding to the persuasion of necessity, since he had been deprived of the weapons which furnished him with not only a living on his island, but courage in his sore affliction, and at the same time fame.
  
   p341  3 So I was feasting my eyes on the spectacle portrayed by these dramas and figuring to myself that, even if I had been in Athens in those days, I could not have witnessed such a contest as this of those distinguished poets.​1 On the contrary, while there were some who did witness contests between the youthful Sophocles and the aged Aeschylus and some who saw the older Sophocles compete with Euripides, his junior, yet the career of Euripides fell quite outside the period of Aeschylus;​2 and besides, probably the tragic poets seldom or never competed against one another with plays on the same theme. And so I was evidently having a rare treat and a novel solace for my illness. 4 Accordingly, I played choregus​3 for myself in very brilliant style and tried to pay close attention, as if I were a judge passing judgement on the premier tragic choruses.4
  
  Yet I could not on oath have produced a single reason why any one of those great poets could have been defeated. For both the nobility of character and the antique flavour of Aeschylus, as well as the ruggedness of his thought and diction, seemed suited to tragedy and to the old-time manners of the heroes,​5 nor was there aught of premeditation or prating or humility in their bearing. 5 For example, even his Odysseus he brought upon the scene as a shrewd and crafty person,​6 as men were in those days, yet far removed from the rascality of to‑day, in consequence  p343 of which he might seem truly ancient as compared with those who to‑day lay claim to simplicity and nobility of character. And again, Aeschylus had no need to add Athena for the purpose of transforming Odysseus so as not to be recognized by Philoctetes for the man he was, as Homer has handled the problem,​7 and also Euripides in imitation of Homer. So possibly one of those who do not like Aeschylus might complain that he was not at all concerned to make his Odysseus convincing in the scene where he is not recognized by Philoctetes. 6 But in my opinion the poet would have a defence against such a criticism; for while the lapse of time was perhaps not sufficient to explain his not recalling the lineaments of Odysseus since only ten years had passed, yet the affliction and distress of Philoctetes and the lonely life he had led in the interval made this lapse of memory not impossible. For many in the past, either from illness or from misfortune, have had that experience.
  
  Furthermore, the chorus of Aeschylus had no need for special pleading, as did that of Euripides. 7 For both poets made their choruses to consist of Lemnians; yet, while Euripides has represented them as immediately apologizing for their former neglect, admitting that during so many years they had neither come near Philoctetes nor rendered him any aid, Aeschylus simply brought his chorus on the scene, a course which is altogether more in keeping with a tragedy and more natural, whereas the other course is more courteous and more strictly correct. Of course, if poets, were able to avoid all violations of logic in their tragedies, perhaps there might be reason for  p345 refusing to gloss over even this instance; but as the truth is, the poets often cause their heralds to complete in a single day a journey which calls for several days.​8 8 Again, it was quite impossible to conceive that not a single Lemnian had come near Philoctetes or given him any attention at all, for in my opinion he could not even have survived those ten years without receiving some aid; no, it is reasonable to suppose that he did get some aid, though but rarely and of no great importance, and, furthermore, that no one chose to take him into his house and give him medical attention because of the disgusting nature of his ailment.​9 At any rate Euripides himself does bring upon the scene one Lemnian, Actor, who approaches Philoctetes as being already known to him and as having often met him.
  
  9 Furthermore, I do not feel that one could justly find fault with Aeschylus for this either — that his hero narrates to the chorus, as if they were in ignorance, the details concerning his desertion by the Achaeans and his experiences in general. The reason is that the victims of misfortune are wont to recall their trials repeatedly, and by their constant rehearsing of details they bore those who know every detail already and have no need to be told. Then again, the deception which Odysseus practised upon Philoctetes and the arguments by which he won him over are not merely more becoming and suited to a hero — though not the words of a Eurybates or a Pataecion​10 — but in my opinion they are even more plausible. 10 For what need was there for subtle craft and scheming in dealing with a sick man and, what is more, an  p347 archer, whose means of defence had lost its power the moment you merely got close to him? Besides, the device of having Odysseus report that the Achaeans had met with disaster, that Agamemnon had died, that Odysseus had been charged with an act that was utterly disgraceful,​11 and that in general the expedition had gone to rack and ruin, was not merely serviceable toward cheering Philoctetes and making the discourse of Odysseus more acceptable; no, in a way it was not without plausibility even, because of the length of the campaign and because of what had happened not so long before in consequence of the wrath of Achilles, at the time when Hector barely missed burning the naval station.12
  
  11 Again, the sagacity of Euripides and his careful attention to every detail, as a result of which not only does he not tolerate anything which lacks plausibility or is marred by carelessness, but also he handles the action, not in artless style, but with entire mastery in the telling — all this forms, as it were, an antithesis to the nature of Aeschylus, being to a high degree characteristic of the citizen and the orator and capable of proving most useful to those who read him. At the very outset of Euripides' play, for instance, Odysseus is introduced as speaker of the prologue and as not only inwardly debating questions of civic nature in general, but first and foremost expressing embarrassment on his own account, lest, while generally reputed to be wise and distinguished for sagacity, he may really be the opposite. 12 For, though he might live free from care and trouble, he is ever being  p349 involved in troubles and perils of his own volition. But the cause of this, he claims, is the ambition which actuates gifted men of noble birth. For, in aiming at a fine reputation and general acclaim, they voluntarily undertake very great and difficult labours.
  
  For nothing quite so proud as man exists.​13
  
  Odysseus then reveals clearly and precisely the plot of the drama and why he has come to Lemnos. 13 And he says he has been disguised by Athena, so that when he meets Philoctetes he may not be recognized by him, Euripides having imitated Homer in this detail.​14 For Homer has represented Odysseus, in his sundry encounters with Eumaeus and Penelopê and the others, as having been disguised by Athena. Odysseus goes on to say that an embassy from the Trojans will soon visit Philoctetes for the purpose of entreating him to place at their disposal both himself and their weapons, offering the throne of Troy as his reward; thus he complicates the plot and invents occasions for debate, in the course of which he shows himself most resource­ful and most proficient in combating the opposing arguments, no matter with whom he is compared.​15 14 Again, Euripides causes Odysseus to arrive not unattended but in company with Diomedes, another Homeric touch.​16 Thus all in all, as I was saying, throughout the whole play he displays the greatest dexterity and plausibility in the action; an irresistible, yes, amazing, power of language; a  p351 dialogue that is clear and natural and urbane; and lyrics that not only are delight­ful but also contain a strong incentive toward virtue.
  
  15 As for Sophocles, he seems to stand midway between the two others, since he has neither the ruggedness and simplicity of Aeschylus nor the precision and shrewdness and urbanity of Euripides, yet he produces a poetry that is august and majestic, highly tragic and euphonious in its phrasing, so that there is the fullest pleasure coupled with sublimity and stateliness. In his management of the action he is most excellent and convincing; for instance, he causes Odysseus to arrive in company with Neoptolemus — since it was ordained that Troy should be taken by Neoptolemus and Philoctetes together, Philoctetes wielding the bow of Heracles — and he makes Odysseus conceal himself but send Neoptolemus to Philoctetes, suggesting to him what he must do. Furthermore, he has composed his chorus not of the natives of Lemnos, as Aeschylus and Euripides do, but of those who sailed in the ship along with Odysseus and Neoptolemus.
  
  16 Again, as Sophocles portrays them, the characters in the drama are wonderfully dignified and noble, his Odysseus being much more gentle and frank than Euripides has depicted him, and his Neoptolemus surpassing all in artlessness and good breeding — at first he aims to get the better of Philoctetes, not by craft and deception, but by strength and without disguise; then, after he has been prevailed upon by Odysseus and has tricked Philoctetes and gained possession of the bow, when Philoctetes becomes aware of what had happened, is indignant at the deception which has been practised upon him, and  p353 demands the return of his weapons, Neoptolemus does not try to retain possession of them but is prepared to return them — though Odysseus appears on the scene and tries to prevent this — and he finally does return them; yet after he has handed them over he tries by argument to persuade Philoctetes to accompany him voluntarily to Troy. 17 But when Philoctetes will by no means yield or be persuaded, but entreats Neoptolemus to take him back to Greece, as he had promised to do, Neoptolemus once more gives his promise, and he is prepared to keep his word, until Heracles comes upon the scene and persuades Philoctetes to sail to Troy of his own free will.17
  
  The lyrics of Sophocles do not contain the didactic element to any great extent, nor any incentive to virtue such as we find in the lyrics of Euripides, but a marvellous sweetness and magnificence, such that Aristophanes could say of him not without reason words like these:
  
  But he in turn the lips of Sophocles,
  With honey smeared, did lick as if as a jar.​18
  
• END OF DIO CHRYSOSTOMUS' 52nd discourse.