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hardPhiloctetes is a play by Sophocles that was first performed in 409 BCE. In the play, Odysseus and Neoptolemus must retrieve Philoctetes—a master archer who is believed necessary for the Greeks to win the Trojan War—from a cave on a deserted island where Odysseus and others had abandoned him with a debilitating injury earlier in the war. Odysseus suggests that the plan for returning with Philoctetes rests on Neoptolemus not having been part of the group that abandoned him:
Which quotation from the play most effectively illustrates the claim?
A
“Since the prize of victory is so dear, / Endure it [acting decently] —We’ll be just another day / But now, for one brief hour, devote thyself / To serve me without shame.”
B
“No moment for this talk, / Lest he discern my coming, and I lose / The scheme, wherewith I think to catch him soon.”
C
“Go near now silently, and make me know / If still he persevere, and hold this spot, / Or have roamed elsewhere, that informed of this I may proceed with what remains to say, / And we may act in concert.”
D
“Now let me show, why thine approach to him / Is safe and trustful as mine cannot be / Thou didst sail forth, not to redeem thine oath / Nor by constraint, nor with the foremost band. / All which reproaches I must bear.”