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Sophocles: Philoktetes

Sophocles: Philoktetes

Seth Schein

University of California at Davis

2003 • 1-58510-086-2 • paper • 160 pages • 5 ½ x 8 ½ • $9.95

A new translation into English. Includes a map, notes, interpretative essay.

|  About the Author  |  Contents  |  Preface  |  Reviews  |

 Author                                                   

Seth Schein is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California at Davis. Trained as a Classicist, Seth Schein's research has focused mainly on Homeric Epic and Attic tragedy. His writings include The Iambic Trimeter in Aeschylus and Sophocles: A Study in Metrical Form, The Mortal Hero: An Introduction to Homer's Iliad, and Reading the Odyssey: Selective Interpretive Essays (ed. and intro.). His interests include literary theory and its history; gender; and the literary representation of history and social institutions and values.

 Table of Contents                                     

Preface
Map
Introduction
Translation with Notes
Interpretive Essay
Appendix: Dio Chrysostom, Discourse 52
Suggestions for Further Reading

 Preface                                                  

This translation is intended for students, teachers, and general readers who desire a version that is as close to the Greek as I have been able to make it without sacrificing readability. I have tried to preserve or to convey the effects of Sophokles’ idioms, imagery, figures of speech, meter, word order, and sentence structure, as well as the combination of a traditional high style with colloquial Attic Greek that is characteristic of all Attic tragedy. Despite some inevitable awkwardness and the impossibility of bringing over into English everything that I see in the Greek, I hope that my version will help readers to achieve an intimate familiarity with the play and its complex meanings.

I have based my translation mainly on the Oxford Classical Text of Sophokles, edited by Hugh Lloyd-Jones and Nigel Wilson,¹ but sometimes I have departed from their text in favor of different manuscript variants or suggestions by modern scholars. I have benefited greatly from the edition and commentary by Sir Richard Jebb and to a lesser extent from the Teubner edition by R.D. Dawe and the commentary by J.C. Kamerbeek.² I also have consulted with profit the translations of Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Maria Pia Pattoni, and Judith Affleck.³ The line numbers in my notes and essays refer to the present translation and occasionally differ by a line or two from the line numbers of the Greek text.

The colleagues, students, and friends with whom I have discussed Philoktetes over the years, and whose comments, criticism, and suggestions have improved my understanding of the play, are too numerous to mention. I would, however, like to thank Nancy Felson and Mark Griffith for commenting helpfully on an early draft of the first few hundred lines of the translation; Deborah Roberts and Heather Wood for reading a penultimate version of the translation and notes and for many detailed suggestions that greatly improved them; Carolyn Dewald, Nancy Felson and Heather Wood for helpful criticism of early drafts of the Introduction and Interpretive Essay; Stephen Esposito, editor of the Focus Classical Library, for detailed criticism of the entire manuscript and many helpful suggestions; the anonymous reader for Focus Classical Library for useful comments and recommendations. I am also grateful to Ron Pullins, publisher of the Focus Classical Library, for encouraging this translation and for helpful suggestions in the final stages of preparing; and to Melissa Wood, Production Manager, and Cynthia Zawalich, Copy Editor, at Focus Publishing for their work in transforming that manuscript into a book. Finally, I would like to thank Sherry Crandon for her support and encouragement as I worked on this volume, and I am happy to dedicate it to my teacher, Helen Bacon, with whom I first studied Philoktetes in Greek as an undergraduate, and to Daniel Schein, my son, with whom I first saw the play performed.

 Reviews                                                     

BMCR 2004.06.16, S.L. Schein (trans.), Sophokles: Philoktetes

     "Seth Schein's new translation of the Philoctetes will serve as a useful text for upper-year classical literature courses in translation. As is typical of the Focus Classical Library series, Schein's translation aims to give a faithful rendering of the Greek that is at the same time readable, if not poetic. It also situates the work in its historical context and generally provides the supplementary material required for readers new to Attic tragedy.
.....
     "Given that it provides more contextual information and interpretive detail than the average translation, and that the translation itself strives for greater fidelity to the original, Schein's work will be most welcome in upper-year translation courses, where it will encourage students to develop a more detailed and subtle understanding of the play."

-- Brad Levett, Carleton University

This translation of Sophokles: Philoktetes, with introduction, notes and essay, is first-rate. Very much in the Focus tradition, the translation is attractive and very readable, while sticking closely to the idiom and structure of the Greek text. The notes do not overwhelm the reader but provide useful and appropriate guidance. The introduction nicely situates the play in its various contexts and the concluding essay offers a strong interpretation while opening up paths for further thought.

-- Michael Halleran, University of Washington