PHILOCTETES

In Greek mythology, Philoctetes was the hero to whom Heracles entrusted his famous bow and poisoned arrows. He used these weapons to shoot Paris, whose death played a major part in the Greeks’ final victory in the Trojan War.

Philoctetes was the son of Demonassa and Poeas,

King of the Malians, a people who inhabited part of southern Thessaly, a region of mainland Greece near Mount Oeta, to the northwest of Athens between Epirus and the Aegean Sea. Etymologically, the name Philoctetes means “one who likes to acquire things,” and as a young man he received one of the most famous gifts in Greek legend: the bow and arrows that had formerly belonged to Heracles, which in most versions the hero gave Philoctetes as a reward for lighting his funeral pyre.

When the Greeks under Agamemnon set sail from the mainland port of Aulis at the start of the Trojan War, they were warned by an oracle that, on their way across the Aegean Sea, they must stop on an island and sacrifice at the altar of a deity named Chryse. Only one of the sailors on board the flotilla knew where to find this shrine— Philoctetes, who in his youth had been present at a sacrifice offered there by Heracles.

The Greeks eventually landed on the island. As they approached the open-air altar, Philoctetes was bitten on the foot by a serpent. The wound would not heal, and Philoctetes’ cries of pain made it impossible for the Greeks to perform the sacrifice, which needed to be carried out in silence. The odor of his wound was also offensive, so they took him to the neighboring island of Lemnos, put him ashore, and sailed for Troy.