Philoktetes

by Sophocles

"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.