Philoctetes
Notebook
Sophocles's Philoctetes (409 BC) is set on the desert island of Lemnos, where the Greeks had abandoned the archer Philoctetes years earlier because of a festering wound. Learning that his invincible bow (the bow of Heracles) is needed to take Troy, Odysseus brings the young Neoptolemus to win it by deceit—but the youth's conscience and pity for the suffering man draw the play into a searching drama of honesty, manipulation, and integrity. The translation is Lewis Campbell's.
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