Philoctetes son of Poeas, captain of seven ships of bowmen and keeper of the bow of Heracles, was bitten by a water-snake as the host sacrificed to Apollo and left in grievous pain on sacred Lemnos — where for years he subsisted alone with the very weapons the Greeks would one day need to take Troy.1
The bow from Oeta
Before Lemnos there was Mount Oeta. When Heracles, poisoned by the shirt of Nessus, had a pyre heaped on the lofty mountain and none would kindle it, Apollodorus says Poeas, Philoctetes' father, chanced by in search of his flocks and lit the fire — and on him Heracles bestowed the bow and arrows. Ovid gives the honour to the son: obedient Philoctetes raised the torch beneath the pyre and took in recompense the capacious quiver, arms destined to see the realm of Troy again. Hyginus twice names Philoctetes himself as the pyre-builder rewarded with the marvellous arrows — and adds that Juno, angry because he alone had dared raise the fire when the hero's mortal body was consumed, would later send against him on Lemnos the snake that struck his foot. The nested episode on the Death of Heracles tells the pyre; here the archer sails to war already armed with the gift of the flame.2
Seven ships from Meliboea
Homer names Philoctetes in the Catalogue of Ships — leader of seven companies from Methone, Thaumacia, Meliboea, and rugged Olizon, fifty oarsmen on each deck, well skilled to fight amain with the bow. Hyginus calls him son of Poeas and Demonassa from Meliboea, with seven ships in the Trojan roll. Apollodorus lists the Olizonians under his captaincy among the muster that sailed for Ilion. Yet when the Iliad opens the archer is absent from the plain: the host that counted his companies in Book 2 remembers him only as a king left behind, suffering on an island while the war burns on without him.3
The snake at the altar
Apollodorus places the wound at a sacrifice: as the army bound for Troy was offering to Apollo, a water-snake approached from the altar and bit Philoctetes. The sore would not heal and grew so noisome that the host could not endure the stench. Hyginus tells the bite differently — on Lemnos a snake struck his foot because Juno resented him for kindling Heracles' pyre when no other man would. Homer names only a deadly water-snake and an evil wound, without saying whether the goddess or the altar sent it; all three agree that the bite would not close and that the army could not keep the sufferer in camp.4
Cast away on sacred Lemnos
Odysseus, on Agamemnon's orders, put Philoctetes ashore on the island of Lemnos with the bow of Heracles which he had in his possession. Ovid's Odysseus would later defend the act before the Greeks: he had urged withdrawal from toils of war and travel so that rest might ease cruel pain — and Philoctetes, he said, took the advice and lives. Apollodorus tells it without apology: abandoned in the wilderness, the archer kept himself alive by shooting birds with the bow. Sacred Lemnos — where the Argonauts had once lingered with Hypsipyle's women and where Euneus son of Jason would later send wine to the besiegers at Troy — became a solitary kingdom of pain and archery, the indispensable man cast out before the first summer of the siege had ended.5
The host remembers
Through the years of the war the Catalogue's footnote endured. But Philoctetes lay suffering grievous pains in an island, even in sacred Lemnos, where the sons of the Achaeans had left him in anguish with an evil wound from a deadly water-snake — there he lay suffering; yet full soon were the Argives beside their ships to bethink them of king Philoctetes. Homer wrote that prophecy into the muster-roll of Book 2 while the Iliad's action still ran in the tenth year: the absent captain already marked for recall. Odysseus, feasting among the Phaeacians, would admit that on Trojan soil none among the Achaeans surpassed him with the bow save Philoctetes — the man the host had cast away. The nested episodes on Wrath and Plague and the long seasons of battle tell the war without him; here the archer endures alone, the bow of Heracles still in his hands and Troy still standing on the horizon.6
Until the oracle spoke
How many seasons Philoctetes kept his vigil on Lemnos the Epitome does not count — only that he subsisted in the wilderness until Calchas and the seers declared that Ilium could not be taken without the bow and arrows of Heracles fighting on the Greek side. Then Odysseus went with Diomedes to Lemnos, got the weapons by craft, and persuaded the embittered archer to sail — fetched, healed at Troy by Podalirius son of Asclepius, and armed to shoot Alexander. The nested episode on the Little Iliad tells that fetch, the death of Paris, and the last stratagems before the horse; the nested episode on Philoctetes to Italy tells the safe Return and the Campanians in the west. Here the story ends on the isle: the wound, the exile, and the bow waiting for the day the Greeks would need the man they had thrown away.7
· EXEUNT ·