Philoctetes (Euripides)

Philoctetes
The wounded Philoctetes
Written by	Euripides
Chorus	Men of Lemnos
Characters	Philoctetes Odysseus Diomedes Actor Trojan ambassador Others?
Date premiered	431 BCE
Place premiered	Athens
Original language	Ancient Greek
Genre	Tragedy
Setting	Lemnos

Philoctetes (Ancient Greek: Φιλοκτήτης) is a tragedy by the Athenian poet Euripides. It was probably first produced in 431 BCE at the Dionysia in a tetralogy that included the extant Medea and was awarded third prize. It is now lost except for a few fragments. Much of what we know of the plot is from the writings of Dio Chrysostom, who compared the Philoctetes plays of Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles and also paraphrased the beginning of Euripides' play.

Less than 20 fragments of Euripides' Philoctetes survive, amounting to about 40 lines. We do know the broad outline of the plot from a comparison by Dio Chrysostom of Euripides' Philoctetes with Aeschylus' Philoctetes (probably 470s BCE) and Sophocles' Philoctetes (409 BCE). In addition, portions of Dio's paraphrase of the early portion of the play are extant. The extant portions of Dio's paraphrase cover the bulk of fragments number 787 through 790. A fragment of a hypothesis of the play exists providing some background information.

Philoctetes is mentioned briefly in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and his story was expanded on in Lesches' Little Iliad and Arctinus' Iliupersis. While in transit to fight the Trojan War, the Greeks had abandoned Philoctetes on the island of Lemnos on their way to Troy because they could not stand his screams of pain and the odor from his wound after he was bitten by a poisonous snake. However, ten years into the Trojan War they found out that Philoctetes and his bow and arrows were required to conquer Troy.