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Libra Esoterica

The Philoctetes of Sophocles

by Sophocles, 496? BCE-407 BCE Sophocles & Thomas Sheridan (Translator)

  • First published:
  • 18th century
  • Language: English

Philoctetes (Ancient Greek: Φιλοκτήτης, Philoktētēs; English pronunciation: , stressed on the third syllable, -tet-) is a play by Sophocles (Aeschylus and Euripides also each wrote a Philoctetes but theirs have not survived). The play was written during the Peloponnesian War. It is one of the seven extant tragedies by Sophocles. It was first performed at the City Dionysia in 409 BC, where it won first prize. The story takes place during the last year of the Trojan War (after the majority of the events of the Iliad). It describes the attempt by Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, and Odysseus, king of Ithaca, to bring the disabled Philoctetes, the master archer, from the island of Lemnos to Troy in the hopes that he and his bow might help end the Trojan War. (This summary is from Wikipedia.)

Provenance

Why this book is in the catalog

Included because retained bibliographic metadata links this work to Mythology, folklore, and sacred legends.

  • Controlled discovery queries from openlibrary-historical and project-gutenberg matched “mythological” and “Mythology”. Retained metadata contains “mythological” in the subject metadata and “Mythology” in the subject metadata.

    • Mythology· via Open Library
    • mythological· via Project Gutenberg
    • mythological· in subject
    • Mythology· in subject

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Editions

2 editions cataloged here.

Open Library record

1725Printed by J. Hyde and E. Dobson for R. OwenEnglishNo ebook

Project Gutenberg electronic edition

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2025-12-26Project GutenbergEnglishPublic domain (USA)

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  • Original print publication date and source edition are absent from Project Gutenberg metadata.
Catalog id
openlibrary-work:OL10327005W
Edition coverage
Multi source partial
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