In Sophocles’ Philoctetes, a crippled hero rots on a lonely island. Once abandoned by the Greeks because of his festering wound, he is now suddenly indispensable, for he alone holds the bow of Heracles, the weapon that prophecy says is needed to bring down Troy. The Greeks send two figures to retrieve it: Odysseus, the master of guile, and Neoptolemus, the young son of Achilles.
Odysseus comes armed with deception. To him, honesty is a luxury. If trickery secures the bow, so be it. He counsels Neoptolemus to lie, to win Philoctetes’ trust under false pretenses, and to strip him of the bow at the opportune moment. For Odysseus, victory is what counts. Morality bends to necessity.
Neoptolemus, by contrast, embodies the code of Achilles. His father’s defining trait was not cleverness but unflinching straightforwardness. Achilles was many things: proud, violent, often reckless, but he never hid behind lies. To Neoptolemus, Odysseus’ plan feels like a betrayal of that inheritance. To deceive a suffering man into surrendering his one weapon is shameful, dishonorable.
Here, the tragic opposition appears: cunning versus candor, manipulation versus principle. Achilles’ legacy says: act openly, bear the cost, fight in daylight. Odysseus’ creed says: bend the world to your will, use masks when the truth won’t serve.
Both stances are powerful and both are limited. Achilles’ straightforwardness is noble but brittle; it can’t adapt, it often destroys as much as it saves. Odysseus’ cunning ensures survival but corrodes trust, leaving behind only suspicion and resentment.
The play itself hints at a synthesis. Neoptolemus initially wavers, manipulated into trickery by Odysseus. But later, his conscience revolts. He chooses honesty, yet not in the rigid, destructive way of Achilles. He admits the deception, restores the bow to Philoctetes, and appeals to him directly: come of your own will. It is neither sheer cunning nor blind candor, but a blend — principle tempered by flexibility, truth spoken without self-destruction.
This moment suggests that real heroism lies not in choosing one pole, but in holding them together. Achilles without Odysseus is doomed stubbornness; Odysseus without Achilles is corrosive manipulation. The synthesis, a kind of tragic wisdom, is to carry the courage of candor while knowing when subtlety is needed, and to use intelligence without surrendering to deceit.
Perhaps that is why the Greeks gave us both heroes. Achilles teaches us to stand in the open; Odysseus reminds us the world is rarely that simple. To live well, one must learn when to be each and how to avoid becoming trapped in either.