Philoctetes

American  

[fil-uhk-tee-teez] / ˌfɪl əkˈti tiz /

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.

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Philoctetes British  

/ 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

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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