Philoctetes

[ fil-uhk-tee-teez ]

noun

1. Classical Mythology. a noted archer and squire of Hercules. Bitten by a snake and abandoned on an island because of his festering wound, he was at length brought by the Greeks to Troy, where he recovered and later killed Paris.
2. (italics) a tragedy (408? b.c.) by Sophocles.

Philoctetes

/ fɪˈlɒktɪˌtiːz; ˌfɪlɒkˈtiːtiːz /

noun

1. Greek myth a hero of the Trojan War, in which he killed Paris with the bow and poisoned arrows given to him by Hercules

Example Sentences

In “The Wound and the Bow,” an influential essay on Sophocles’ “Philoctetes,” Edmund Wilson articulated this conundrum in different terms, arguing that it reflected a conception of “superior strength as inseparable from disability.”

From Los Angeles Times

The play can be read alongside “Philoctetes,” another of the author’s late works that is similarly focused on a character whose agonizing life contains a miraculous benefit.

From Los Angeles Times

Besides his original poems, his noted works include a bestselling translation of the Old English epic “Beowulf” and his play “The Cure at Troy,” a verse adaptation of Sophocles’ “Philoctetes,” with Heaney’s inspirational alliteration about a time when “hope and history rhyme.”

From Seattle Times

The chorus isn’t the only element Harris borrowed from the Greeks; “On Sugarland” was inspired by the Sophocles play “Philoctetes,” about two soldiers who try to persuade a master archer with a chronically festering foot wound to rejoin the Trojan War.

From New York Times

I had more shows to see: first Kae Tempest’s “Paradise,” a reworking of Sophocles’ “Philoctetes” with an all-female cast at the National Theater.

From New York Times