by Sophocles
1437–1450 But look at the cruelty . . . you’ve seen nothing that is not Zeus Many scholars, wishing to protect both the reputations of Zeus and Sophocles, have pointed out that with the reckless impiety of Hyllos’ speech, Sophocles intended to attribute Hyllos’ sentiments to his youth and his grief. But Hyllos shows intelligence and courage in resisting his father to the extent he does. Sophocles carries his characterization of Herakles and Zeus to the logical conclusion voiced by Hyllos.
PHILOKTETES
NEOPTOLEMOS Son of Achilles. A neophyte, new to war and to the world.
2 Lemnos Lemnos, as staged, is desolate, though historically the island was inhabited. Here the fable-like setting, uncluttered by the lumber of insignificant descriptive detail, allows the psychological and physiological drama to be projected with near hallucinatory clarity. It deepens Philoktetes’ isolation from the world—cut off not only from human companionship, but from human history. With Neoptolemos’s arrival, however, he is plunged back into the midst of both.
5–7 as you’re truly the son / of Achilles . . . listen to me Odysseus uses Neoptolemos’s pedigree as a ‘hook’ to enlist him in a scheme that contradicts everything his breeding stands for. (There’s no “as” or “listen to me” in the Greek. This is a framing device, signaling that Odysseus’s studied identification of Neoptolemos is not ‘dead exposition’ for an audience needing background information. Rather, the passage has a dramatic function that an ancient Greek audience, unlike a modern one, would have recognized without prompting. It is directed at Neoptolemos himself—to get him to associate this questionable undertaking with the heroic legacy of his father, Achilles.)
9 the Malian, son of Poias Philoktetes’ lineage confirms his nobility. Malis is under Mount Oita, where Philoktetes, in an act of mercy, put the torch to Herakles’ funeral pyre.
10 under orders from the chiefs Odysseus cites extenuating circumstances to explain away his past abandonment of Philoktetes. He was acting under orders. Philoktetes’ odor and screams were unbearable to the army, they interfered with religious rituals, etc.
19–20 my scheme / to take him is wasted The Odysseus of the post–Homeric Epic Cycle, unlike the Odysseus of Homer, is known for his cunning and unscrupulousness. This negative portrayal extends into the classical era of Sophocles’ own time. The exemplary Odysseus of Aias—who averts, if he does not resolve, the highly charged sociopolitical impasse dramatized in that play—is a rare exception.
21 it’s your job to help me carry this out Odysseus, tightening his grip on Neoptolemos, lets the young man know he’s not a fellow-warrior on a mission but a subordinate under military command.
50 scrounging for food The Greek phrase implies that Philoktetes forages for food more like an animal than a human being.
51 Send your man to watch out The unseen sailor who trailed them as they made their way up the cliff.
60 Some plan you haven’t heard yet Having positioned Neop-tolemos to do what he (thought he) would never do, Odysseus keeps drawing the young man in, by stages deepening his involvement.
65 reach into his soul. / Take it! A literal translation. This is well-designed to appeal to Neoptolemos. Even as it counters his putative ethic of always acting ‘aboveboard,’ rhetorically it is pitched to his instinctive tendency, as a young and eager warrior, to act.
70 they’d begged you, prayed you, to leave your home “They” are Odysseus and Phoinix.
71 you were their only hope of taking Troy What Odysseus has not said, yet, is that as much as they need Neoptolemos, they also need Philoktetes and the bow given to him by Herakles.
74–75 Instead / they handed them over to Odysseus Cf. Aias.
81–82 You didn’t / come to Troy bound by an oath Unlike Philoktetes, Odysseus did not go to Troy voluntarily. He and other suitors of Helen were bound by an oath to her father, Tyndareus, to help her husband (who has turned out to be Menelaos) if she were seduced or abducted by another man. When Helen went off with Paris, Odysseus did everything he could to avoid going to war. He pretended to be mad, harnessing a donkey and an ox—which have different stride lengths—to his plow. But when the Greeks put his young son Telemachus in front of the plow, Odysseus veered to save him, proving his sanity. The irony of Odysseus the conscript coming to dragoon Philoktetes, who had volunteered to fight in the war, is not incidental. Resolutions in this world, as in ours, are not necessarily nor even ordinarily based on what is fair or just. As mandated by Herakles, the demands of a temporal justice based on the individual must be set aside when the enduring good of the collectivity is at stake. What’s more, this will benefit the individual as well. (e.g., The ‘good’ Odysseus in Aias insists that even though Aias has been an enemy, he should be given a proper burial. Because, as Odysseus says: “One day I will have the same need.”)
90 O . . . I know, it’s not like you Odysseus knows the still-green Neoptolemos inside out. That will change, however, as Neoptolemos, getting a ‘crash course’ experience of the world from Philoktetes, becomes more complex and less predictable.
94–95 Give yourself . . . one short, shameless / stretch of day Having drawn Neoptolemos this far in, rather than mask or excuse the shamelessness of the deception, Odysseus flaunts it—but speaks as though the shamelessness could be limited to the duration of the act itself.
96–97 Then, forever after . . . the very soul of honor A cynical rationale informed by considerable realism and truth. The capture of Troy could well ‘put paid’ any lingering sense of shame.
99–100 It’s not in me . . . in my father Neoptolemos’s certainty of his own rectitude comes not from experience but confidence in his breeding.
105–106 I’d rather do / what’s right, and fail As Neoptolemos’s idealistic, untested morality teeters amidst the complexity and confusion of life-in-the-world, his moral posture grows increasingly assertive and abstract.
110–111 learned it’s words / that move people, not deeds A scholiast (an ancient interpreter of classical texts) identified this as a slander directed against contemporary Athenian politicians.
118 Arrows definite as the death they deliver Sophocles reproduces the Homeric tendency to ‘personify’ weapons as though they were self-acting. This short, sharp exchange between Odysseus and Neoptolemos is an instance of stichomythia, a technique for increasing dramatic intensity by assigning alternating lines or ‘rows’ of speech to two characters, often with the alternating lines linked by a single word. (Neoptolemos: “Won’t the look on my face give me away?” Odysseus: “Look to what’s in it for you.”)
122–123 Not if lying gets us through this / dragged-out war Literally, “Not if the lie brings deliverance.” This is not about deliverance in general, however, but about breaking the specific impasse the Homeric Greeks have found themselves at. Fifth-century Greeks would have had that impasse (we’d use metaphors such as ‘bogged down’ or ‘quagmire’) firmly in mind. It’s less likely that modern audiences will have a comparable awareness.
128 not going to take Troy? Like you said? Plural “you.” Cf. 390–391.
135–136 what I told you then? Understood? . . . I’ve said I would This is the only place where Sophocles uses end rhyme to close off a passage of stichomythia. Odysseus is making sure that Neoptolemos understands not only what he’s supposed to do, but its implications.
146–148 May Hermes . . . Defender of Athens Hermes, the god who speeds things along, is also associated with thievery and deception. Athena, the patron of Odysseus, is identified here as Athena Polias (the Defender of Athens). Sophocles invokes Athena’s relationship to Athens to link Odysseus with Athens—thus reconceiving him, anachronistically, as a representative of the Athenian polity. Homer’s Odysseus had no relation to Athens. This then is a critical political interpolation by Sophocles.
160–161 You, still in youth, / have had this passed down to you “The whole ancestral power of Achilles’ family” is now in the hands of Neoptolemos (Webster, 80).
187 I feel sorr
y for him Here the sailors feel for Philoktetes. Yet when he’s lying helpless, they’ll be eager to capture him. This doesn’t mean they’re self-contradictory or insincere. They feel what they’re free to feel, or what their own interests compel them to feel, depending on what the moment and the circumstances allow for.
203 dappled or shaggy beasts Someone has remarked on Sophocles’ “careful imprecision.” The “beasts” could be spotted deer and shaggy goats, but we’ll never know. Nor should we. We’re not supposed to get caught up in such details. Sophocles, having another order of ‘truth’ in view, needs to keep the fabulous or otherworldly aspect of Lemnos—it’s so purely what it is—intact.
206–208 Echo . . . crying back at him his own crying Rather than lessen his solitude, Echo compounds it.
211 the vicious Chryse- The serpent guarding the shrine of Chryse-, an obscure, localized deity, has bitten and infected Philoktetes. The gods allowed this to happen, but only to put off the destined fall of Troy until the time was right. Foreknowledge of this comes from Helenos, the Trojan seer captured by Odysseus.
214 his almighty bow The bow Herakles gave Philoktetes.
242 this desolate island In the plays (now lost) that Aeschylus and Euripides wrote about Philoktetes, the island was inhabited. The choruses were made up of Lemnians.
249 if you really come as friends Time and again Philoktetes’ desperate hopes for deliverance are hedged by his own justifiable suspicions.
269 your grandfather Lykomedes Neoptolemos’s grandfather on his mother’s side.
281 Not one word of me abandoned here A crushing blow to his pride as a warrior.
287–288 my disease / flourishes its worst, and spreads As is typical of Philoktetes, he conceives his disease as having a life of its own.
293 two commanders and Odysseus The Greek text doesn’t name Odysseus but refers to him by his title: Lord of Kephallenia. The island of Kephallenia was part of Odysseus’s domain.
296–297 vicious . . . vicious The repetition occurs in the original text. The story itself needed no elaboration, as the audience would have been familiar with it.
298 Sickness I was left alone with Another ‘personification,’ or self-acting entity.
305–306 some rags . . . Me too they left Implicitly equating Philoktetes with the rags.
319–320 I made do / myself. Had to. Philoktetes is a lord, not a generic warrior. He was not prepared, emotionally or practically, to live a ‘make-do’ life. His hands are made for his bow, not for menial nor craft work. e.g., His wooden cup is “rough, poorly made.”
368 You said it, boy! “Philoktetes, excited by the boy’s words, turns colloquial. The exclamation . . . does not recur [in the canon of classical tragedies]” (Ussher, 122).
387 the great Odysseus Sarcastic, in keeping with Odysseus’s instructions to say “anything you want about me. Nothing’s too nasty” (76).
395–396 I wanted so to see my father / unburied Neoptolemos, born the day Achilles left for Troy, has never seen his father.
397 Then too, they promised me Neoptolemos’s ambition for success as a warrior never leaves him. Herakles in his parting words will allude to this.
401 still painful Sigeion “Painful” because it’s where he first landed at Troy. The soldiers crowding round, swearing that in Neoptolemos “the dead Achilles lived again,” brought home to him the felt reality of his father’s death.
431–433 An army, like a city, depends . . . from their leaders Popular wisdom cast as a gno-me-, a moral aphorism or proverb. N.B. Homilies or ‘old sayings’ crop up from time to time, especially among the Chorus. The dramatic utility of this maxim, as distinguished from its substance, is that it’s canned. It serves as a convenient device for Neoptolemos to put the minefield of his improvised story behind him—to seal it off with a truism, thus precluding further discussion or questioning. As with any drama, it’s necessary to recognize not only what is said, but what the saying is doing. In dramatic as in social context, even a cliché may reveal something having little or nothing to do with its ostensible meaning. This particular gno-me- may have an extratheatrical function as well. According to Jebb: “This play was brought out in the spring of 409 B.C. The Revolution of the Four Hundred in the summer of 411 B.C. was emphatically a case in which Peisander and his fellow oligarchs had corrupted or intimidated the polis. Thus, to the ears of an Athenian audience, [Sophocles’] verses might well suggest a lightly-hinted apology for those citizens who, against their will, had been compromised by the conspirators” (1898, 69–70). When we put all this together, Neoptolemos’s patchwork ‘saying’ becomes rich soil indeed.
436–442 Goddess of Mountains . . . Wondrous Mother The Chorus invokes a goddess who has the features of Mother Earth and Kybele, “a Phrygian goddess identified with the Greek Rhea, mother of Zeus” (Schein, 37). Effectively, the sailors, with their invocation of the goddess and their criticism of the sons of Atreus, are lending atmospheric support to Neoptolemos’s deception.
467 the bastard Sisyphos begot then sold to Laertes Sisyphos was notorious for his cunning. Anticleia, made pregnant by Sisyphos, was carrying Odysseus when Laertes bought her with ‘many gifts.’
471 Nestor of Pylos King of Pylos. His son, Antilochos, was a leading warrior and a friend of Achilles.
483 Patroklos Achilles’ lover. He was killed by Hektor, who was in turn killed by Achilles.
487–488 war doesn’t single out evil men, but in general kills the good A common saying.
493 Thersites An ugly, lame, quarrelsome man who reputedly taunted Achilles, who then killed him. In the Iliad, as a self-appointed representative of the dêmos, the common people, Thersites is a caricature. There he’s pitted against Odysseus, who embodies the dominant monarchic/aristocratic order and perspective informing the Iliad (Cartledge, 33–37).
499–500 keeping / the slick smooth ones out of Hades e.g., Sisyphos.
507 O son of an Oitan father Reminder of Philoktetes’ link to Herakles.
513 rockbound Skyros Neoptolemos’s home island.
547 Chalkedon in Euboea A contemporary of Philoktetes’ father, Poias.
570–571 if it were me I’d turn / their evils to his advantage Even as the Chorus gives Neoptolemos (sometimes impassioned) advice, the sailors are not about to press the matter. After all, he’s still their master.
585–587 Just pray . . . wherever we’re going The indefinition of Neoptolemos’s “wherever” does double duty: it allows him to avoid being presumptuous, which would offend the gods, and it allows Philoktetes to persist in the delusion that they’re going to take him home.
MERCHANT The charade orchestrated by Odysseus to hasten Philoktetes’ departure from the island. In this play-within-a-play-within-a-play, the fake merchant speaks in a progressively ‘confidential’ tone, whereas Neoptolemos, playing to Philoktetes, grows louder and louder.
605–606 vineyards / of Peparethos A small island famous for its wine. The ‘Merchant’ supplies wine to the Greek forces at the siege of Troy. He’ll peddle anything to anyone, wine or information, provided there’s money in it. This gives the faux merchant an air of authenticity. Possibly it gave the audience a bit of extracurricular amusement as well.
617 and the sons of Theseus Theseus was the legendary founder of Athens. Akamas and Demophon, his sons, are obscure figures known mainly from post-Homeric poems about the sack of Troy. They do not appear in the Iliad. But then, all male Athenians are in a sense ‘sons of Theseus.’ This seemingly offhand allusion is one of many intimations or reminders that Philoktetes is, among other things—and especially as regards the ethos of Odysseus—also a comment on contemporary Athens.
630–631 a man who . . . but first, who is that over there? An interruption intended to rekindle Philoketes’ fears and hasten his departure from Lemnos.
682 That bottomless pit of a man Literally, “that utter devil” (Ussher, 61) or “utter plague” (Lloyd-Jones, 315) or something on the order of “he’s a complete loss”
(Webster, 108). The Greek is an abusive phrase that Ussher (131) thinks may be colloquial, though it seems not to exist in Greek comedy. The problem is that ritual imprecations such as these can’t be taken seriously. “Bottomless pit” is, then, a shot in the dark of Hades—which Odysseus’s father, Sisyphos, had already tested to its limits (see below).
683–687 He’d persuade me . . . to rise . . . like his own father did The dying Sisyphos instructed his wife not to bury him. When he arrived in the underworld, he asked that Hades return him to earth—to punish her for not doing her duty and burying him. Hades consented, and Sisyphos returned to the world until fate in the guise of Necessity (anangke) put him under for good.
713 To tame this vicious wound Philoktetes regards the wound as a wild beast (Ussher, 132). That is, he objectifies the wound by ‘animating’ but not anthropomorphizing it. The wound remains ‘other.’ This is not so with personification as we ordinarily, and correctly, understand that term: as a means of appropriating or absorbing what is ‘other,’ or projecting that ‘other’ as an expression of one’s self.
740–741 Whoever knows how to pay back / kindness A gno-me- or maxim.
746–747 the man who tried to slip into / Zeus’ wife’s bed As punishment for his grievous violation of the laws of hospitality, Ixion was bound forever to a wheel of fire.
790–791 will bring him to his own / ancestral home They feel for Philoktetes in his misery, yet embellish the deception that Neoptolemos will return him to his home in Oita.
793–796 bronze-shielded Herakles / rose in flames . . . high above Oita Cf. Women of Trakhis.
832 this wandering disease Literally, “wanderer”: an ancient medical term for intermittent fever (Ussher, 136).
856–857 wherever / the heavens send us Again, Neoptolemos’s piety hides his purposeful ambiguity. He knows full well where ‘the heavens’ are sending them.