How long does it take to read Sophocles?
Sophocles by Sophocles takes about 5 hours 41 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 41 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1832. 310 pages, about 85,250 words.
12 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 9 hours 28 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 41 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 33 minutes |
The page count is the median across 96 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Sophocles' Philoctetes is one of the most widely read Greek tragedies today but is a complex and challenging play to interpret. Its representation of Philoctetes as a sufferer of physical and emotional pain gives it remarkable power and intensity. It juxtaposes Homeric and fifth-century institutions and values, explores honor, power and expediency as principles of personal and political life, and represents contrasts and conflicts between innocence and experience, ends and means, and the needs and demands of the individual and those of society. This edition with commentary makes the play accessible to students, teachers, and other readers of Greek literature at all levels. The introduction discusses the main problems of interpretation and gives an account of its reception from antiquity to the present day.
Subjects: Drama, Oedipus (Greek mythology), Greek drama (Tragedy), Greek Mythology, Greek drama, Antigone (Greek mythology)
