PHILOCTETES  , in

Greek legend, son of Poeas king of the Malians of Mt Oeta, one of the suitors of Helen and a celebrated hero of the Trojan War . Homer merely states that he was distinguished for his prowess with the bow; that he was bitten by a snake on the journey to Troy and left behind in the island of Lemnos; and that he subsequently returned home in safety . These brief allusions were elaborated by the " cyclic " poets, and the adventures of Philoctetes formed the subject of tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides . In the later form of the story Philoctetes was the friend and armour-bearer of Heracles, who presented him with his bow and poisoned arrows as a reward for kindling the fire on Mt Oeta, on which the hero immolated himself . Philoctetes remained at Lemnos till the tenth year of the war . An oracle having declared that Troy could not be taken without the arrows of Heracles, Odysseus and Diomedes (or Neoptolemus) were sent to fetch Philoctetes . On his arrival before Troy he was healed of his wound by Machaon, and slew Paris; shortly afterwards the city was taken . On his return to his own country, finding that a revolt had broken out against him, he again took ship and sailed for Italy, where he founded Petilia and Cremissa . He fell fighting on the side of a band of Rhodian colonists against some later immigrants from Pallene in Achaea . His tomb and sanctuary were shown at Macalla, on the coast of Bruttium . Of the Aeschylean and Euripidean tragedies only a few fragments remain; of the two by Sophocles, one is extant, the other, dealing with the fortunes of Philoctetes before Troy, is lost . Some light is thrown upon the lost plays by Dio Chrysostom, who in one of his discourses (52) describes his reading of the three tragedies, and in another (59) gives a prose version of the opening of the Philoctetes of Euripides .

Philoctetes was also the subject of tragedies by Achaeus of

Eretria, Euphorion of Chalcis and the Roman tragedian Accius . According to F . Marx (Neue Jahrbiicher fur das klassische Altertum, 1904, p . 673-685), Philoctetes did not appear in the original legend of Troy . He is a form of the Lemnian Hephaestus, who alighted on the island when flung out of Olympus by Zeus . Like him, he is lame and an outcast for nine years; like him, he is brought back in time of need . His connexion with the fall of Troy indicates that the fire-god himself set fire to the city; in like manner no other than the fire-god was thought worthy to kindle the pyre of Heracles . See Homer, Iliad, ii . 718, Odyssey, iii . 190, viii . 219; Sophocles, Philoctetes, and Jebb's Introduction; Diod . Sic. iv .

38;

Philostratus, Heroica, 6; Strabo vi . 254; Hyginus, Fab . 36, 102 .