Having heard Neoptolemus' narrative of his supposed wrongs, Philoctetes is led to enquire after a number of eminent Greeks. It emerges that the ‘good’ are dead (or powerless), only the ‘bad’ survive. Great significance has been attached to this passage by some interpreters, who use it to explain, in part, the refusal of Philoctetes to go to Troy. The true heroes, they say, have departed leaving a corrupt world with which a Philoctetes cannot bear to be associated. Cf. 1348ff. (on which see pp. 296f. above). But can the episode really carry this weight of interpretation? It is worth considering who, precisely, are the living and the dead in question.

First, then, for the living bad. They are Odysseus: and who else? The sequence of names is as follows: Diomede and Odysseus (416f.), Odysseus (429f), Odysseus (441) – but no, it is Thersites (442)! Diomede, who is on the whole an attractive character in the Iliad, is introduced, very briefly, as known to have been associated with Odysseus in more than one crafty action (and possibly with a cross-reference to the Philoctetes of Euripides). The function of Thersites is simply and solely to provide the crowning insult. The Aithiopis story is beside the point: what an educated man in the audience would remember was Iliad 2 (Jebb refers to 212, 222) and how Thersites for speaking out of place was soundly thrashed by Odysseus!

By contrast, the good are dead, or, in the case of Nestor, powerless. Philoctetes selects for enquiry those who might have been expected to protect Neoptolemus against his (non-existent) injury.