Heroic Companionship

Heroic Companionship:

 The Quality of Philia in Sophocles' Philoctetes

Dale P. Woodiel

University of Hartford

In his introduction to his translation of Euripides' Heracles, William Arrowsmith (53 ff.) suggests that "the heavy yoke of necessity," which Heracles must bear as a result of Hera's intervention, is made endurable by a "yoke of love," philia or friendship, "which lies close to, if it does not usurp, the instinct for survival."

The theme of philia -- friendly love, affec­tion, or friendship --is manifest in Euripides' Heracles.  Theseus, whom Heracles has rescued from the underworld, is introduced by Euripides in the role of a faithful and wise friend who is willing to risk everything to return the friend­ship shown him by Heracles. "I loathe a friend whose gratitude grows old," says Theseus, "a friend who takes his friend's prosperity but will not voyage with him in his grief' (1223-25, trans. Arrowsmith).

Theseus goes on to counsel Heracles that though his agonizing fate is a result of Hera's actions, the gods, though powerful, are flawed as men are. His advice is to be patient and not to yield to grief.  Heracles responds to the offer of friendship and agrees to accompany Theseus to Athens.

In this token rejection of the power of the gods and the substitution of the love and friend­ship of human beings, Euripides appears to be treading on new philosophical ground and to be advocating something akin to heroic human­ism. That the gods will forever be effecting their wills on mortals is taken for granted, but the emphasis in Heracles is on the

human will, the power of human interdependence and friend­ship, and the ability of this power to ease the "burden of necessity" imposed by the gods from time to time on all mortals. "The man," Hera­cles says in his final lines, "who would prefer great wealth or strength more than love, more than friends, is diseased of soul" (1425-26).

It is this emphasis on the role of intense friendship -- what Charles Segal (292) has termed "heroic companionship" -- that figures so prominently in Sophocles' penultimate drama, the Philoctetes.

Almost a generation after the presentation of Euripides' Heracles, Sophocles was, at the age of 87,[i] to win first prize with the presentation of his Philoctetes, which, like Heracles, is distin­guished by its humanistic characterization. It likewise utilizes the theme of philia, and more than incidentally, perhaps, it introduces the voice of Heracles as the deus ex machina, a dra­matic intervention that alters the outcome of the conflict.

An analysis of the Philoctetes will reveal in Sophocles' Neoptolemus a humanistic charac­terization that echoes, and develops consider­ably, that of Euripides' Theseus. It is Neoptole­mus, the still-young son of Achilles, who accom­panies Odysseus to Lemnos in search of the abandoned Philoctetes. [ii] However, unlike The­seus with regard to Heracles, Neoptolemus' demonstrations of friendship are not motivated by obligation. Rather, he defies Odysseus and befriends Philoctetes because of his nature, his sense of justice, and, most important, his sense of integrity (arete).  More specifically, he does not wish to be perceived or remembered as a liar. "What do you bid me do," he asks of Odysseus early in the play, "but to tell lies (pseude legein)?"[iii]  Like his famous father Achilles, and quite unlike Odysseus, Neoptolemus professes "a natural antipathy" to achieving his ends "by tricks and stratagems" (87-88).  Clearly, he is motivated by other forces than duty.

Though the figure of Philoctetes, famous in Greek mythology as the befriender of Heracles at his death,[iv] is generally seen by critics as the hero of Sophocles' play, the role of Neoptolemus is central both to the action and the theme (Kitto, 297).

In Greek legend the characters of Philoctetes and Neoptolemus are connected, of course, as the key players in the destruction of Troy.[v]  The Trojan seer Helenus, son of Priam and brother of Hector and Cassandra, reveals to the Greeks the two conditions that must be met in order for the Greeks to be victorious: Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, must be brought into the battle and

Philoctetes must be brought to the war from his exile on the island of Lemnos along with the bow of Heracles.

In one sense, the actions of  Neoptolemus parallel those of a traditional hero who, because of a flaw in judgment, falls into a shameful scheme of deceit, only to become aware of his er­ror and rise to a position of even greater strength and stature. While in the prologue he appears dutiful and at the service of whatever Odysseus orders, Neoptolemus is soon plagued by reserva­tions. "Ensnaring the soul of Philoctetes with words" goes against the grain.[vi]  Eventually, however, he suppresses his better nature and lies convincingly to Philoctetes -- to the extent, in fact, that Philoctetes, at the onset of a great seizure of pain, actually gives him the famous and powerful bow of Heracles, the obtaining of which was the major objective of Neoptolemus' and Odysseus' venture.  However, it is this act of trust that shocks N eoptolemus into the aware­ness of his dreadful error and compels him to return the bow, forget Troy, and agree to take the old warrior home. "All is disgust," he says, "when one leaves his own nature and does things that misfit it" (902-3).

By his ultimate decision to return Philoctetes to his home, not to Troy, and by re­sponding to his nature (physis), the son of Achilles is sacrificing his opportunity for honor (time) and glory (kleos) as one of the victors at Troy, and he is, at the same time, defying what he knows to be the will of the gods -- that Philoctetes be taken to Troy with the bow of Hera­cles. Neoptolemus, unlike Euripides' Theseus, does not question whether the judgment of the gods is flawed; he merely responds to his natu­ral inclinations toward fairness and honesty, to the "noble nature" of the son of Achilles -- the powers of philia. In a contemporary context, such actions might be understood to reflect Neoptolemus' sense of character.

For the Sophoclean hero, such suffering arises from his struggle to maintain a personal sense of arete, as opposed to a more public sense of renown (time). King Oedipus' persistence in identifying the murderer of Laius and Antigone's insistence on honorable burial for both of her brothers come to mind as Sophoclean actions that verify personal conviction rather than public postures.

It has been asserted that the Sophoclean hero "stands or falls by his arete." When his -- or her in the case of Antigone -- sense of arete is threat­ened, the personal struggle begins, but when the choice is between duty or what is required by his environment on the one hand and his integrity on the other, "the hero at once realizes that the inward excellence of his personality is his most precious possession" (Opstelten, 89).

Nevertheless, all human attempts at persua­sion fail in this case. It is left to the gods, or the god-like powers of Heracles, to persuade. It is in the process of failing to persuade Philoctetes to return willingly to Troy and in his vow to return him to his home in the name of honor and friendship that Neoptolemus displays, so to speak, his humanistic heroism. Such is his na­ture, a quality that he has inherited from his famous father.

Neoptolemus, like Achilles, possesses a fundamental sense of integrity that casts him immediately into direct opposition to Odysseus.[vii] Unlike wily Odysseus, Neoptolemus does not hold that an end justifies the means used to achieve it.  Personal integrity and "heroic com­panionship" are considered above all else. It is the representation of this aspect of Neoptolemus' character, his "nonacceptance of the world" (Segal, 318), originally exemplified by his fa­ther in Homer's Iliad, that makes Sophocles' portrayal of Neoptolemus in the Philoctetes unique.

Of course, Neoptolemus (whose Greek name means "one new to battle and debate") is young and inexperienced and understandably vulner­able to the direction and influence of Odysseus; one senses that this is the first real test of his arete, and when tested it fails him. Yet, he is able to rise above his mistake, and in the end he reacts not as the warrior son of Achilles bent on achieving kleos at the sack of Troy but as a sym­pathetic human being reacting out of pity and a sense of justice. His ultimate concern is for the welfare of Philoctetes, another human being (and now friend) who has been wronged. At the same time, he wishes to right his own wrongs by restoring his sense of integrity through an ex­pression of genuine friendship.[viii] He had given his word. Consequently, when his efforts of "friendly persuasion" fail to convince Philoctetes, he is willing to forget Troy and the future of the Greek army, and, for that matter, the stipulations of the prophecy, in order to honor Philoctetes' request to be returned to his home. These are the actions of a character unique in Greek drama.

The origins of the qualities apparent in Neoptolemus, values that arise in the oikos in love of friendship and family relationships, so obviously interesting to Sophocles, can, not surprisingly perhaps, be found in the attitudes of the gods regarding guest friendship depicted in the Homeric epics.  Odysseus’ treatment in the house of Alcinous (as depicted in Odyssey 7-12) and the encounter between Diomedes and Glaucon (6.120 ff.) in the Iliad are two apt examples.

It is particularly noteworthy that, after all of Achilles' agonizing introspection and subse­quent maniacal venting of his wrath, his final gesture in the Iliad is a humane one, which re­flects both his sense of inner excellence and his sense of familial friendship: the releasing to old Priam of the body of Hector for burial (Mandel, 117). In the final lines of the Iliad we see in Achilles an emerging change in the nature of the hero, one less obsessed with desire for glory and one more characterized by inner qualities. Achilles is the forerunner of this type that we see in the Philoctetes in his son Neoptolemus. Achilles lives on in Neoptolemus, who repre­sents, to a degree, a moral advance, a hero more given to pity and sacrifice.

So, in the end, in his expression of true friendship, Neoptolemus places himself in di­rect conflict with the gods as well as the state. He is not worried about the gods. "How shall I avoid the blame of the Greeks?" he asks Philoctetes (1406). "I shall be there with the bow of Hera­cles," the old warrior replies. It is, then, this conflict between the individual and the state that was uppermost, perhaps, in Sophocles' mind during his last days.[ix]  This brings us back to Theseus and Heracles and the "burden of neces­sity."

Necessity is a fact of life that does not al­ways appear to be just. Early in the play Neop­tolemus uses "necessity" as his justification for wanting Philoctetes to leave with him. "Necessity, a great necessity, compels it. Do not be angry" (923-4). He means that the gods have decreed as much, and the gods will have their way in the long run.  Further, life's processes, including the decisions of the gods, are often in­human and apparently unjust. Yet, when con­fronted with breaking his word, Neoptolemus is struck with "a terrible compassion," a change of heart, which will eventually lead him to reject the forces behind this "great necessity."

What Sophocles is suggesting, of course, is the concept of individual conscience, that al­lows itself the freedom to respond from a sense of philia rather than mere duty, a view that would still, one critic has put it, be "fresh, controver­sial, and dangerous when Thoreau voiced it again after too many centuries of silence" (Mandel, 119).

As Sophocles neared the end of his long and productive life, he was apparently still manipu­lating the themes that had interested him in the Ajax and the Antigone and certainly the Oedipus Tyrannus, his earliest plays. "What," he seems to be asking, "are the limits of the human will in the shadow of the everpresent power of the gods?" While he would seem to agree with Socrates that "the unexamined life is not worth living," that one has a duty to extend his human will to its limit, he seems clearly resigned to the inevitability that the gods will have the final say.

Therefore, for Sophocles the fate of man is to work his will as best he can in response to "the burden of necessity" presented by the existence of the gods. Unlike her sister Ismene,  Antigone feels justified in dying for a sacred principle be­cause she is confident she has fulfilled the will of the gods. Oedipus is heroic in his faithfulness to the gods despite the fact that they have doomed him in response to his having exemplified the finest of human attributes. Only by the intro­duction of the deus ex machina is Neoptolemus relieved of what one anticipates would have been the inevitable retribution of the gods for his re­jection of their will and the substitution of his own.

We are faced at the end of the Philoctetes with the undeniable reality that the will of the gods must be fulfilled. This is more or less the natu­ral order of things. However, we are left also with the appealing power of Neoptolemus' deci­sion. For Neoptolemus, as for Euripides' Hera­cles, it is philia that makes necessity endurable.

It is Philoctetes himself who anticipates the best of all possible fates in his farewell lines to the island, which has been his prison for so long:

I had never hoped for this.

Farewell Lemnos, sea-encircled,

blame me not but send me on my way

with a fair voyage to where a great destiny carries me, and the judgment of friends,

and the all-conquering

Spirit who has brought this to pass. (1464-68)

[Originally published in the New England Classical Newsletter & Journal Volume XVIII May 1991 Number 4]

Bibliography

Arrowsmith, William, trans., Euripides' Her­acles, University of Chicago, 1952.

Kitto, H. D. F., Greek Tragedy, New York, 1954. Mandel, Oscar, Philoctetes and

        the Fall of Troy, University of Nebraska Press, 1981.

Opstelten, J. C., Sophocles and Greek Pessimism, trans. by J. A. Ross,

      Amsterdam, 1952.

Segal, Charles, Tragedy and Civilization, Har­vard University Press, 1981.

End Notes

     [i] Sophocles' final play was to be Oedipus at Colonus, in which he recounts the death of Oedipus. (Colonus, incidentally, was Sophocles' birthplace.) In his Philoctetes he had returned to a character in some ways similar to the Oedipus of the Oedipus Tyrannus, unjustly condemned and heroic in his stubborn persistence. Critics con­tinue to speculate about possible relationships between Sophocles' advanced age at the time his last plays were written and the themes of those plays. (See David Grene's Reality & the Historic Pattern, Chicago, 1967.)

[ii]  Various versions of the story suggest that Diomedes was sent from Troy to fetch Philoctetes and Odysseus was sent to fetch Neoptolemus. Other versions (including Euripides' version) suggest that they were both sent to fetch Philoctetes. According to Sir James Frazer, the translator of Apollodorus, Sophocles is alone in placing Neoptolemus with Odysseus on the is­land mission: "However, while Sophocles di­verges from what seems to have been the usual story by representing Neoptolemus instead of Diomedes as the companion of Ulysses on this er­rand, he implicitly recognizes the other version by putting it in the mouth of the merchant (Philoctetes, 570-597). (The Library of Apol­lodorus, trans. by Sir James Frazer: Putnam, 1921, pp. 222-3.)

[iii] In the typical spirit of the Greek warrior Neop­tolemus is not opposed -- at this point in the play--to taking Philoctetes by force. Lying, however, is another matter.

[iv] In Seneca's Hercules on Oeta there is an excellent account of the dialogue between Philoctetes and Heracles at Heracles' funeral pyre. It should also be noted that in the midst of one of his dreadful attacks of pain, Philoctetes asks Neoptolemus to take up his body and "burn it on what they call the Lemnial fire," reminding him that he had once had the resolution to honor such a request from Heracles only to be given his bow in return for the favor.

      [v] One cannot for long consider Neoptolemus as the noble son of Achilles befriending Philoctetes without remembering him within the broader myth. One must remember that he and Philoctetes do, indeed, become the heroes at the fall of Troy and that it is this same Neoptolemus who echoes his father's actions in another way. Although Achilles gives up Hector's body to old Priam, it is not before he has dragged it about be­hind his chariot in full view of Hector's family and friends. Neoptolemus is to show the same brutality in his merciless slaughter of the young son of Priam at the family altar in Priam's pres­ence. When in his last wrathful gesture the old king attempts to kill his son's slayer, Neoptole­mus lops off Priam's head with his sword.  Priam's decapitated body is dragged by Neop­tolemus to the tomb of Achi1ies and left there to rot.

      [vi] It is interesting to speculate as to Sophocles' ap­parent interest in what might be termed "aristocratic inheritance" or "inherited arete": Creon accuses Antigone of being just like her stubborn father, and Neoptolemus is constantly being identified by Philoctetes as reflecting his father's noble nature.

      [vii] In the Iliad it is Achilles who says to Odysseus when he and others have come attempting to per­suade him: "For as I detest the doorways of Death, I detest that man, who hides one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks forth another" (9.312-13). ".

[viii]  Neoptolemus looks upon his act of deception as a failure or a fault (hamartia). Lattimore          trans­lates the word as "sin," which has an unmistak­able Christian overtone.

      [ix] One could, of course, argue that this action is not motivated by friendship but is merely a response to the "not unworthy" ransom offered by Priam. However, Priam appeals to Achilles to "remember [his] own father" who is old like him, and Achilles weeps in "a passion of grieving for his own father," as well as for his friend Patro­clus. Also, Achilles' wish to keep this action se­cret from Agamemnon might be considered fur­ther indication of his personal motivation as a "son" to a "father.”