Sophocles: Philoctetes

Description

Sophocles' Philoctetes is one of the most widely read Greek tragedies today but is a complex and challenging play to interpret. Its representation of Philoctetes as a sufferer of physical and emotional pain gives it remarkable power and intensity. It juxtaposes Homeric and fifth-century institutions and values, explores honor, power and expediency as principles of personal and political life, and represents contrasts and conflicts between innocence and experience, ends and means, and the needs and demands of the individual and those of society. This edition with commentary makes the play accessible to students, teachers, and other readers of Greek literature at all levels. The introduction discusses the main problems of interpretation and gives an account of its reception from antiquity to the present day.

Seth L. Schein is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis. His main areas of scholarly research and writing are Homeric epic and Attic tragedy.

'This volume is an excellent addition to an excellent series.' The Classical Journal 'This excellent commentary by Seth Schein ... deserves to become both a frequent point of reference for scholars and a welcome resource for teachers and their pupils. Undergraduate students reading the play with me this term have reacted very positively to the book, especially to its careful explanation of the Greek and its full discussion of the play's dramatic and literary qualities ... Schein has thought hard about what his target audience needs, and the fruits of that thinking are everywhere palpable.' P. J. Finglass, Bryn Mawr Classical Review