Philoctetes

by

Sophocles

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Philoctetes makes teaching easy.
Chryse is a minor Greek goddess with an island of the same name. During the initial Greek expedition to Troy to fight the Trojan War, the Greek fleet, which was led by Odysseus and Philoctetes and under the command of Atreus’s sons, stopped on the island Chryse, where Philoctetes was bitten on the foot by a snake for disturbing the shrine of Chryse. Philoctetes’s wound festered and refused to heal, and he was subsequently abandoned on Lemnos, the very next island on the way to Troy. Neoptolemus claims that Chryse has ordered Philoctetes’s wound and suffering, but Philoctetes refuses to go to Troy and find relief from his pain until Heracles appears and orders him to do so.

Chryse Quotes in Philoctetes

The Philoctetes quotes below are all either spoken by Chryse or refer to Chryse. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Disability and Discrimination Theme Icon
).
Entry of the Chorus (Lines 135 – 218) Quotes

His dreadful fate’s no wonder to me.
If I have an inkling, his sufferings first
Were sent by the gods, when he entered the shrine
Of cruel Chryse, who dealt him his wound.
So what he endures now, far from his friends.
Must also be due to the will of some god:
He may not aim those god-given shafts,
Which none can resist, at the towers of Troy,
Till the time has come when the prophet declares
Those arrows will prove her destruction.

Related Characters: Neoptolemus (speaker), Philoctetes, Chorus, Chryse
Related Symbols: Philoctetes’s Wound  , Philoctetes’s Bow and Arrows
Page Number: 210
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Philoctetes LitChart as a printable PDF.
Philoctetes PDF

Chryse Quotes in Philoctetes

The Philoctetes quotes below are all either spoken by Chryse or refer to Chryse. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Disability and Discrimination Theme Icon
).
Entry of the Chorus (Lines 135 – 218) Quotes

His dreadful fate’s no wonder to me.
If I have an inkling, his sufferings first
Were sent by the gods, when he entered the shrine
Of cruel Chryse, who dealt him his wound.
So what he endures now, far from his friends.
Must also be due to the will of some god:
He may not aim those god-given shafts,
Which none can resist, at the towers of Troy,
Till the time has come when the prophet declares
Those arrows will prove her destruction.

Related Characters: Neoptolemus (speaker), Philoctetes, Chorus, Chryse
Related Symbols: Philoctetes’s Wound  , Philoctetes’s Bow and Arrows
Page Number: 210
Explanation and Analysis: