Laertes is Odysseus’s father, but Philoctetes implies here that Sisyphus, who represents deception in Sophocles’s play, is Odysseus’s
real father. According to myth, Sisyphus seduced Odysseus’s mother
before Laertes paid her dowry, and Philoctetes therefore suggests that Laertes “bought” Odysseus, too. Diomedes is a close friend of Odysseus’s, and in many versions of the myth of Philoctetes, Diomedes accompanies Odysseus to bring Philoctetes to Troy instead of Neoptolemus.