Emily Austin, Associate Professor of Classics and the College at the University of Chicago, will present her lecture, the Power of Solitude in Sophocles’ Philoctetes.

Sophocles’ Philoctetes presents its lonely hero as incomparably wretched. Yet this suffering figure also claims that his isolated survival is something uniquely heroic. This lecture explores the tension between debasement and nobility in Sophocles’ play, taking seriously Philoctetes’ claims to heroism, which are unparalleled in the poetic discourse of his time.