ABSTRACT
“Laokoon suffers as Sophocles’ Philoctetes suffers.” Mr. Lessing 1 commences with this comparison and argues that it is no comparison: that Sophocles’ Philoctetes does not simply sigh with worry and anxiety but cries aloud and screams with wild curses; that he fills the desolate island with these awful cries, and makes the theatre too echo with the sounds of anger, misery and despair. Winkelmann therefore first cannot have read it properly, and secondly made a false comparison and drew a false conclusion.
