CLASSICAL CLUB TO PUT ON "PHILOCTETES" BY SOPHOCLES THIS WEEK

The following article was written for the Crimson by A. H. Chase '27, instructor in Greek and Latin.

The Philoctetes of Sophocles, which is to be presented Wednesday and Friday of this week by the Harvard Classical Club, was a work of the poet's extreme old age, for it was produced when he was eighty-seven. The legend of the wounded hero abandoned by the Greeks on Lemnos on their way to Troy, and later eagerly sought by them when he and his famous bow were needed for the capture of the city, had been treated by both Aeschylus and Euripides. Sophocles made changes in the myth which lift the plot from the level of a common intrigue to a study of the highest psychological and ethical interest. He intensified the loneliness of the here by making Lemnos a deserted island, where Philoctetes lived in hardship, a prey alike to paroxysms of intense physical pain from the noisome wound in his foot and to a growing bitterness and hatred against those who had betrayed him. But the supreme stroke of genius was the introduction of the character of Neoptolemus, the youthful son of Achilles. Neoptolemus comes with Odysseus, who had been the cause of the abandonment of Philoctetes, to carry back to Troy the wounded hero and his bow. In the two figures of Neoptolemus and Odysseus are personified not only the antagonism between Aeolian and Ionian, not only the reciprocal blindness of bold youth and cautious middle-age, but the eternal conflict between idealism and opportunism.

Difficulty in Persuasion

Only with difficulty does Odysseus persuade Neoptolemus to adopt his plan of tricking Philoctetes with lies, and the trust which the latter shows the son of his old friend Achilles soon arouses the already troubled conscience of the young man. When Philoctetes in a fit of agony intrusts to him the coveted bow and arrows Neoptolemus refuses to be false to his friend or to himself, and tells him the truth. There follows a long struggle between Philoctetes' determination never to go to Troy and Neoptolemus' attempts to persuade him. Odysseus seeks to employ violence, and finally drives Neoptolemus to return the bow to its owner and even to promise to take him home to Greece. His kindness almost breaks down the resolve of Philoctetes, but the latter remains firm until his apotheosized friend Heracles appears as deus ex machine to bid Philoctetes go to Troy as the command of the gods. So Sophocles satisfied his own principle of the invincible will and at the same time followed the legend. Even in the evening of his days, which must have been shadowed by the approaching ruin of Athens, he could draw with a sure hand the hero embittered by suffering and injustice.