Philoctetes (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Sophocles
- First Published: 409
- Type of Work: Play
- Type of Plot: Tragedy
- Time of Work: The Trojan War
- Setting: The island of Lemnos
- Genres: Drama, Tragedy
- Subjects: Mythology or myths, War, Islands, Gods or goddesses, Heroes or heroism, Soldiers, Greek or Roman times, Greece or Greek people, Trojan War
- Locales: Islands, Greece, ancient, Lemnos, ancient, Euboea
Characters Discussed
Philoctetes (fihl-ok-TEE- teez), a Greek warrior who had received as a legacy from Herakles his magical bow and arrows. As the Greek expedition sailed toward Troy, it had paused at Chrysa, where Philoctetes, approaching a shrine, had been bitten on the foot by a serpent. The wound refused to heal. Because Philoctetes’ screams of pain and the odor emanating from the wound caused acute discomfort to his shipmates, he was, at the instigation of Odysseus and the Atreidae, marooned on the barren island of Lemnos. Ten years later, the Greeks captured Helenus, a...
[The entire page is 911 words long]
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