Philoktetes

Translated by Gergely Csiky

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"Philoktetes" by Sophocles is a tragedy performed in Athens in 409 BCE. The play tells the story of the Greek hero Philoctetes, abandoned on the island of Lemnos for ten years due to a festering wound. When the Greeks learn they cannot conquer Troy without Heracles' bow and arrows—now possessed by Philoctetes—Odysseus and young Neoptolemus must retrieve them. What follows is a moral dilemma between heroic virtue and political necessity, as deception clashes with honor on a desolate shore.

Summary written by Project Gutenberg, by machine.