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Sophocles and the cult of Philoctetes*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

S. J. Harrison
S. J. Harrison
Affiliation:
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
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Extract

Amongst the legendary heroes who appear in leading roles in the surviving plays of Sophocles, it is noteworthy that Oedipus, Ajax and Heracles all received some form of divine worship in Attica, not to mention localities more readily associated with each of them. Sophocles is not unaware of this aspect of each of these figures, but where the future prospect of their cult is alluded to in the plays, such allusions are not always prominent or explicit; though the future cult of the Oedipus of the Oedipus Coloneus is crucial for the play, it is only directly mentioned in a few passages, while the Ajax of Ajax is seen as a future receiver of cult only in a single unusual scene of supplicating his dead body, and it is unclear in the Trachiniae whether the audience is intended to supply a future cult on Oeta and apotheosis for Heracles. I should here like to argue that in Philoctetes Sophocles again consciously employs a hero destined to receive worship after his death, and that this is subtly suggested at the end of the play.

Type
Notes
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 109 , November 1989 , pp. 173 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1989

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References

1 Sample evidence for the Attic cults of Sophoclean heroes: Pausanias i 30.4 (Oedipus), Diodorus Siculus iv 39.1 (Heracles), Pausanias i 35.3 (Ajax).

2 On the references to heroic cult in O.C. cf. Bowra, C. M., Sophoclean tragedy (Oxford 1944) 319–20Google Scholar, Winnington-Ingram, R. P., Sophocles: an interpretation (Cambridge 1980) 254–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 On the allusion to hero-cult in the corpse-supplication scene of the Ajax cf. Burian, P., GRBS xiii (1972) 151–6Google Scholar.

4 On the issue of whether we are to recall the apotheosis of Heracles on Oeta at the end of Trachiniae cf. P. Holt, above pp. 69–80, Bowra 159–60, Lloyd-Jones, H., The justice of Zeus (Berkeley 1970) 128–9Google Scholar, Easterling, P-E., ICS vi (1981) 56–74Google Scholar, Stinton, T. C. W. in Greek tragedy and its legacy: essays presented to D.J. Conacher (Calgary 1986) 84–91Google Scholar. In Philoctetes, of course, there is no doubt about the matter (727–9,1420).

5 Jebb ad loc. suggests the laurel-wreath, Webster (supported by Scale, D., Vision and stagecraft in Sophocles [London 1982] 45Google Scholar) the youthful radiance, also seen in divine depictions on vases.

6 Cf.Strabo vi 1.3, Vergil Aen. iii 401–2, Fiehn in RE xix 2507.1 ff.

7 Cf. Susemihl, F., Geschichte der griechischen Literatur in der Alexandrinerzeit (Leipzig 1891–1892) 274, 478Google Scholar.

8 Only a single fragment of Euphorion's poem remains (fr. 44 in Powell's Collectanea Alexandrina); it concerns Iphimachus' care for Philoctetes on Lemnos. Tzetzes on Lycophron Al. 911 cites Euphorion for the salient details of Philoctetes' career in Italy without mentioning hero-cult, which suggests that this element was not in Euphorion's poem.

9 For the worship of Heracles on Oeta cf. Farnell, L. R., Greek Herocults and ideas of immortality (Oxford 1921) 170–4Google Scholar, Cook, A. B., Zeus iii (Cambridge 1914–1940) 903Google Scholar.

10 μνῆμα is Schweighaüser's conjecture for the MSS. μίμημα; it is supported both by the sense of the passage (μίμημα τῆς ἐκείνου πάθης would be appropriate for the snake but not for the bow or corslet, and μνῆμα seems a much more natural term for a memorial cult) and by the fifteenth-century Latin translation of Appian by Candidus, possibly using independent MS. tradition, which renders the disputed word ‘monimentum’.

11 Cf. Philoctetes 1326–8, Pausanias viii 33.4. The same passage of Pausanias mentions that by the second century AD Chyrse had sunk beneath the sea; the modern Kharos sandbank, some ten miles east of Lemnos, might be a good candidate for its remains. This island Chryse is not to be confused with the coastal city of Chryse in the Iliad, home of Chryses and Chryseis (Iliad i 431 ff).

12 Cf. Meiggs, R., The Athenian Empire (Oxford 1972), 424–5Google Scholar, and Meyer, E. in Kleine Pauly iii 554Google Scholar.

13 Op. cit. (n. 2) 299 n. 60.

14 On the bestial aspects of Philoctetes cf. Winnington-lngram, op. cit. (n. 2) 290–1, Knox, B. M. W., The heroic temper (Berkeley 1964) 130–1Google Scholar.