How Philoctetes drew on The Odyssey
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 Odyssey
Homer · c. 725 BCE
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
Philoctetes
Sophocles · 409 BCE
Ancient GreeceRelevance
5/10
On Philoctetes’s page
- The Odysseus who manipulates this play is the resourceful schemer of the Odyssey, recast as a tactician who loses control of his own ruse
- Sophocles sets that Odyssean cunning against Achillean honesty and compassion — a moral argument staged through Homer's most famous deceiver
- Knowing the admirable trickster of the Odyssey first sharpens how unsettling his methods become here
On The Odyssey’s page
- The scheming Odysseus who drives Philoctetes is the polytropos trickster of this poem, transplanted onto the tragic stage
- Sophocles takes the man of many turns and darkens him — the cunning that wins admiration here becomes an instrumental deception that curdles
- The play stages a contest between Odyssean guile and Achillean honesty, and the Odysseus ethos comes straight from the Odyssey