Sophocles Philoctetes and Suffering War: How Many Cures at Lemnos

Seamus Heaney entitled his translation of Sophocles Philoctetes, "The Cure at Troy."

The Greek myth of the war hero Philoctetes, abandoned on a deserted island because of a war wound, resolved with the healing of his physical wound as he returned to the war and gave his necessary military skills to the Greek war effort. In this presentation we read Sophocles Philoctetes to explore the number of "cures" Sophocles re-imagined as preconditions for military talent to rejoin the community that betrayed him.

Bio: Roberta Stewart is Professor of Classical Studies at Dartmouth College, where she

teaches Roman History, Comparative Slavery, Latin, Greek, and “War Stories” (with the

Comparative Literature Program). Stewart regularly co-directs the Classics

Department’s Roman Foreign Study program. She has also, since 2008, led book groups