Sophokles, Philoktetes

Translated by Gregory McNamee

The plays of the Greek tragedian Sophokles have reverberated throughout the centuries, and the passage of time has done nothing whatever to diminish their force. The dramatist's last play, Philoktetes, written at the age of eighty-seven, summarized the wisdom gained by a lifetime of artistic struggle. The subject of Edmund Wilson's famous essay "The Wound and the Bow," the play may be seen as the first literary expression of the "nature-nurture controversy," which the author resolves with supreme insight into the question of human character in an unfortunately neglected classic that still speaks to the modern world.

"McNamee's is the best version in English." —William Arrowsmith