The Politics of Philoctetes

Ruth S. Scodel (University of Michigan)

Euripides' Philoctetes of 431 was clearly the most overtly political of the versions of this story by the three great tragedians, and it offers a new approach to reading Sophocles' version, since the comparison makes salient what Sophocles does not include.  Such a reading is a useful supplement to such political interpretations of Sophocles as that in E. Greenwood's recent Thucydides and the Shaping of History.

Among the most striking innovations in Euripides' Philoctetes was a Trojan embassy. According to the fragmentary hypothesis, Helenus had already told the Trojans that the bow of Heracles would secure the city.  Later he advised the Greeks to "form the same alliance." 

In the Telephus of 438, the disguised Telephus spoke in defense of the Trojans.  In Philoctetes (431), Odysseus, his appearance altered by Athena, approached the hero in the character of a follower of Palamedes, a victim of Odysseus' machinations. Yet when the Trojan embassy arrived, he opposed it on behalf of the Greeks in a formal agon on patriotic grounds.  In fr. 796 he says:

ὑπέρ γε μέντοι παντὸς Ἑλλήνων στρατοῦ
αἰσχρὸν σιωπᾶν, βαρβάρους δ' ἕᾶν λέγειν

In fr. 798, he  offers the patriotic argument familiar from Sophocles' Antigone (188-90) and Pericles' funeral oration in Thucydides (2.602.):

πατρὶς καλῶς πράσσουσα τὸν τυχόντ' ἀεὶ
μείζω τίθησι, δυστυχοῦσα δ' ἀσθενῆ.

If the Greek army is a polis, Philoctetes resembles an exile whose defection to the enemy could harm his native city.  If it is a coalition, he represents a reluctant potential ally, and the theft of his bow later in the play recalls the force with which Athens threatened its allies.  Yet neither potentially dangerous exiles nor restive allies were especially a source of anxiety in Athens just  at the beginning of the war.  They were both important for much of Aeschylus' career, though—exiles were recalled before the Xerxes' invasion, allies were coerced into the Delian League.  Aeschylus' version evoked these issues, probably without fully exploring them; Euripides' version addressed problems that were  not especially salient at the precise time of composition and production, but that recurred in Greek history and were implicit in Aeschylus' play. 

During the years between Euripides' and Sophocles' productions, the relevance of Euripides' tragedy was demonstrated repeatedly, with Alcibiades showing how dangerous an exile could be, and Melos proving how far Athenians would go in order to force the unwilling.  However, Sophocles mutes connections between Philoctetes and the exile or Philoctetes and the potential allied city.  In his play, nothing invites the spectator to think of Troy as analogous to Persia or Sparta.  Instead, Sophocles introduces the real possibility that Neoptolemus will takes Philoctetes home, and so asks whether and how to act in a corrupt culture.  The play evokes is "quiet Athenian," who does not participate in political life.