Sophocles: The Philoctetes

333 Pages·1898·18.747 MB·English

by  R.C. Jebb

S O P H O C L ES
THE PLAYS AND FRAGMENTS.
PART IV.
THE PHILOCTETES.
SonDon: C. J. CLAY AND SONS,
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE,
AVE MARIA LANE.
ffilaggofo: 263, ARGYLE STREET.
ILttpjtfl: F. A. BROCKHAUS.
gnrft: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
E. SEYMOUR HALE.
SOPHOCLES
THE PLAYS AND FRAGMENTS
WITH CRITICAL NOTES, COMMENTARY, AND
TRANSLATION IN ENGLISH PROSE,
BY
R. C. JEBB, LITT.D.,
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK AND FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE :
HON. LL.D. EDINBURGH, HARVARD AND DUBLIN;
HON. DOCT. PHILOS., BOLOGNA.
PART IV.
THE PHILOCTETES.
SECOND EDITION.
EDITED FOR THE SYNDICS OF THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
CAMBRIDGE:
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
1898
[All Rights reserved^
u* Edition 1890.
ind Edition 1898
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION . . ...... . . page vii
§ i. The home of Philoctetes. §§ 2, 3. The legend in epic
poetry. § 4. Characteristics of the epic version.
§ 5. The story as a theme for drama. § 6. The three great
dramatists. § 7. The Philoctetes of Aeschylus. § 8. The
Philoctetes of Euripides.
§ 9. Sophocles — his originality. § 10. Analysis of the
play. § 11. General scope of the treatment. § 12. The
oracle. § 13. Episode of the merchant. § 14. The Chorus.
§ 15. Odysseus. § 16. Topography.
§17. Other literature of the subject. Greek plays. § 18. At-
tius. Euphorion. § 19. Fe"nelon's Te"le"maque. — Lessing. —
French dramas. § 20. The legend in Art. § 21. The scene
of the sacrifice. § 22. Chryse.
§ 23. Date of the play. Supposed political reference.
§ 24. Diction. § 25. Versification.
MANUSCRIPTS, EDITIONS, ETC. . . . . . .. xliii
§§ i, 2. The Laurentian and other MSS. § 3. Scholia.
§ 4. Interpolations. § 5. Emendations. § 6. Editions, etc.
METRICAL ANALYSIS . . . . . . . .. xlvi
ANCIENT ARGUMENTS TO THE PLAY ; DRAMATIS PERSONAE ;
STRUCTURE ......... 3
TEXT ...... ..... 6
y
APPENDIX . . . . . . . . . .. 2 29
INDICES . . . . . . . . . .. 2 55

INTRODUCTION.
§ i. ON the eastern coast of Greece, just north of Thermo- The home
pylae, lies a region which in ancient times was called Malis,' the ° e .
octet S
sheep-land.' This was the country of Philoctetes,—the home
to which, in the play of Sophocles, his thoughts are constantly
turning1. It will be well to form some idea of its chief features
and associations.
Pindus, the spine of northern Greece, terminates at the south
in Typhrestus, a great pyramidal height from which two moun-
tain-ranges branch out towards the eastern sea. One of these is
Othrys, which skirts the southern border of Thessaly; the other,
south of it, is Oeta, which, like Malis, takes its name from its
pastures. The deep and broad depression between them is the
fertile valley of the Spercheius (the ' hurrying' or ' vehement')
—which rises at the foot of Typhrestus, and flows into the
Malian Gulf. A few miles from the sea, the valley opens.
While Othrys continues its eastward direction, Oeta recedes
southward, and then, with a sudden bend to the south-east,
1 The Homeric Catalogue includes this district in Phthia, the realm of Achilles
(//. 2. 682). It assigns Philoctetes to a more northerly part of Thessaly,—viz., the
narrow and mountainous strip of coast, N. and E. of the Pagasaean Gulf, which was
known in historical times as Magnesia. His four towns were Methone, Thaumacia,
Meliboea and Olizon. (//. 2. 716 f.) This agrees with the fact that Poeas, the father
of Philoctetes, was called the son of Thauinacus, and was numbered among the
Argonauts who sailed from lolcus (Apollod. r. 9. 16). In its original form, the story
of Poeas and his son must have belonged, like that of Jason, to the legends of the
Minyae who dwelt on the eastern coasts of Thessaly. Cp. Anthol. append. 61 (vol. II.
p. 754 ed. Jacobs):
TO^WV 'Hpa/cX^ous rafdyv, HoiavTiov vl6v,
ijSe ^I\OKT^T^V yi) Mwudj /target.
It was when the myth became interwoven with the apotheosis of Heracles that the
home of Poeas was transferred to the country around Trachis.
viii INTRODUCTION.
sweeps down upon Thermopylae, where the fir-clad and snowy
summit of Callidromus rises above the pass. Precipitous cliffs
are thrown forward from this part of the Oetaean range, forming
an irregular crescent round the southern and western sides of
the plain. These cliffs were called of old 'the Trachinian Rocks.'
Trachis, the ' city of the crags/ stood on a rocky spur beneath
them, a little north of the point where they are cleft by the
magnificent gorge of the Asopus,—that steep ravine by which
Hydarnes led his Persians up through the mountain oak-woods, on
the night before he surprised Leonidas. Between the Asopus and
the Spercheius are the narrow channels of two lesser streams,
anciently known as the Melas and the Dyras1. The name Malis
denoted this whole seaboard plain, with the heights around it,
from the lower spurs of Othrys on the north to those of Oeta
on the south and west.. Just opposite the entrance of the Gulf,
the bold north-west promontory of Euboea, once called Cape
Cenaeum, runs out towards the mainland. There was a peculiar
fitness in the phrase of Sophocles, when he described this dis-
trict, with its varied scenery, as c the haunt of Malian Nymphs2,'
1 The Dyras was said to have first started from the ground in order to relieve the
fiery pangs of Heracles (Her. 7.198). In a vase-painting noticed below (n. on v. 728,
p. 121, ist col.), the Nymph who seeks to quench the pyre probably symbolises this
stream.
The ancient mouth of the Spercheius was some miles N. w. of Thermopylae; the
present mouths are a little E.N.E. of it, and the line of the coast has been considerably
advanced, so that there is no longer a narrow pass. The Asopus, Melas and Dyras
formerly had separate courses to the sea. They are now mere affluents of the
Spercheius,—the Melas and Dyras uniting before they reach it.
2 v. 725 at>\av MaXiddwp vvnQav.
INTRODUCTION. ix
those beings of the forest and the river, of the hills and the
sea.
It was in this region that legend placed the last deeds of
Heracles, and his death, or rather his passage from earth to
Olympus. After taking Oechalia in Euboea, he was sacrificing
on Cape Cenaeum when the fatal robe did its work. He was
carried to his home at Trachis; and then he commanded that he
should be borne to the top of Mount Oeta, sacred to Zeus, and burnt
alive. He was obeyed ; as the flames arose on the mountain,
they were answered from heaven by the blaze of lightning and
the roll of thunder; and by that sign his companions knew that
the spirit of the great warrior had been welcomed to the home
of his immortal father. Somewhere in the wilds of those lonely
summits tradition showed the sacred spot known as ' the Pyre';
and once, at least, in later days a Roman Consul, turning aside
from a victorious progress, went up to visit the solemn place
where the most Roman of Greek heroes had received the supreme
reward of fortitude1.
§ 2. Heracles had constrained his son Hyllus to aid in pre- Thelegen
paring the funeral-pile, but could not prevail upon him to kindle
it. That office was performed, at his urgent prayer, by the
youthful Philoctetes, son of Poeas, king of Malis2. In token of
gratitude, Heracles bequeathed to Philoctetes the bow and arrows
which he himself had received from Apollo.
In the myths relating to the Trojan war a most important
part belonged to the man who had thus inherited the invincible
weapons. Homer, indeed, does not say much about him; but
the Iliad contains only an episode in the tenth year of the war:
the part played by Philoctetes came before and after that
moment. The allusion in the Second Book of the Iliad is,
1 Manius Acilius Glabrio, after taking Heracleia near Trachis, in the war with
Antiochus (191 B.C.). Livy 36. 30: ipse Oetam ascendit, Herculique sacrificium fecit
in eo loco quern Pyram, quod ibi mortale corpus eius dei sit crematum, appellant.
Cp. Silius Italicus 6. 452: Vixdum clara dies summa lustrabat in Oeta | Herculei
monimenta rogi.—The name Pyra seems to have been usually associated with a height
about eight miles w. N.w. of Trachis.
2 With regard to the other version, according to which Poeas was the kindler, see
on v. 802.
x INTR OD UCTION.
however, significant; it glances backwards and forwards. He is
there mentioned as a skilful archer, who had sailed from Greece in
command of seven ships, but had been left behind in Lemnos,
wounded by the bite of a deadly water-snake. And then the
poet adds that the Greeks at Troy will soon have cause to
bethink them of Philoctetes1. In the Odyssey he is named only
twice; in one place, as having been the best bowman at Troy;
in another, as one of those heroes who came safely home2. But
his adventures were fully told in other epics. The events pre-
ceding the action of the Iliad were contained in the Cypria> an
epic whose reputed author, Stasinus of Cyprus, lived early in the
eighth century B.C. That poem described how Philoctetes was
bitten by the snake,—while the Greeks, on their way to Troy,
were at Tenedos,—and was abandoned in Lemnos. His later
fortunes were narrated in the Little Iliad, ascribed to Lesches of
Mitylene (circa 700 B.C.), and in the Iliupersis, or' Sack of Troy,'
by Arctinus of Miletus (c. 776 B.C.). The contents of these lost
works are known chiefly from the prose summaries of the gram-
marian Proclus (140 A.D.), as partly preserved by Photius in his
Bibliotheca. The following is an outline of the story in its epic
form.'
§ 3. When the Greeks under Agamemnon were about to sail
against Troy, it became known that an oracle had commanded
them to offer sacrifice, in the course of their voyage across the
Aegean, at the altar of a deity named Chryse. All the accounts
placed this altar somewhere in the north-east of the Archipelago.
The prevalent version assigned it to a small island which, like
the deity herself, was called Chryse, and lay close to the eastern
shore of Lemnos. Jason, it was said, had sacrificed at this altar
when he was leading the Argonauts in quest of the golden
fleece. Heracles had paid it a like homage when he was levying
war against Laomedon.
1 //. 2. 721 ff.:
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Arj/JUHj) ev iiya.8eri, S9i fuv \lirov vies 'A.x<u.Qv,
eXxei iwxftl^ovra KO.KI} 6\o6<ppovos SSpov'
£v6* 5 ye KCIT' Ajfiluv rdxa tie fiVT?i<reff6cu
'ApyeToi vapa vijvffi •fciXo/cr^Tao &VO.KTOS.
2 Od. 8. 219: 3. 190.