How Philoctetes drew on The Iliad
A documented line of influence: Sophocles demonstrably engaged Homer’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Iliad
Homer · c. 750 BCE
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
Philoctetes
Sophocles · 409 BCE
Ancient GreeceRelevance
8/10
On Philoctetes’s page
- Sophocles's marooned hero first appears in the Iliad — named in the Catalogue of Ships alongside Achilles, both fighters set apart, absent, in pain
- Philoctetes is constructed along the lines of Iliad 9's embassy to Achilles: the same scene of envoys trying to talk a wronged man back into a war he's done with
- Read the Iliad and you'll recognize Achilles's wrath and withdrawal living again in Sophocles's bitter, abandoned archer
On The Iliad’s page
- Philoctetes and Achilles are named together back in the Catalogue of Ships — two heroes alienated, absent, and in pain
- Sophocles seized on that pairing: he built Philoctetes along the lines of Iliad 9's embassy, the great scene of a wronged hero refusing to rejoin the war
- The wrath-and-withdrawal pattern Homer gave Achilles becomes the engine of Sophocles's marooned, embittered archer