Life & Wisdom Quote by Sophocles

A gift from an enemy is never just a gift; its ribbon is a leash. Sophocles compresses an entire political psychology into that blunt, almost proverb-like line: what looks like generosity in the hands of an adversary is more often a bid for control, a test of loyalty, or a way to launder aggression into civility. The phrase "true saying among men" matters because it frames suspicion as hard-earned social knowledge, not paranoid temperament. This isn’t private bitterness; it’s communal realism.

The subtext is transactional and theatrical at once. In Sophoclean tragedy, power rarely announces itself as power. It arrives as counsel, hospitality, alliance, mercy. Accepting the enemy’s gift risks becoming complicit in their story about you: that you can be bought, that your grievance can be managed, that your autonomy is negotiable. And if you refuse? You look unreasonable. The trap is reputational as much as material.

Contextually, this fits a world where reciprocity is a binding system, not a warm sentiment. Gift exchange in Greek culture created obligations; it set terms. To take something is to owe something, and tragedy is largely the genre of fatal obligations piling up. Sophocles is warning that when an enemy enters the economy of favors, the price is hidden and the repayment is demanded at the worst moment.

The line also carries an austere ethical edge: even if the gift seems to "profit", it’s "profitless" because it corrodes judgment. It buys a pause, a softness, a delay in seeing the threat clearly - and in tragic time, delay is destiny.