Philoctetes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2008)

In Greek mythology, Philoctetes (also Philoktêtês or Philocthetes, Φιλοκτήτης) was the son of King Poeas of Meliboea in Thessaly. He was a Greek hero, famed as an archer, and was a participant in the Trojan War. He was the subject of at least two plays by Sophocles, and one each by Aeschylus and Euripides. However, only one Sophoclean play survives, the others are lost. He is also mentioned in Homer's Iliad; Book 2 describes his exile on the island of Lemnos, his wound by snake-bite, and his eventual recall by the Greeks. The recall of Philoctetes is told in the lost epic Little Iliad, where his retrieval was accomplished by Odysseus and Diomedes.

Contents

[edit] The stories

Philoctetes was the son of King Poeas of the city of Meliboea in Thessaly. When Heracles wore the shirt of Nessus and built his funeral pyre, no one would light it for him except for Philoctetes or in other versions his father Poeas. Because of this, Philoctetes or Poeas is given Heracles' bow and poisoned arrows. This gained him the favor of the newly deified Heracles.

Philoctetes was of the many eligible Greeks who competed for the hand of Helen, the Spartan princess and most beautiful woman in the world. As such, he was required to participate in the conflict to reclaim her for Menelaus in the Trojan War. Philoctetes was stranded on the Island of Lemnos or Chryse by the Greeks on the way to Troy. There are at least four separate tales about what happened to strand Philoctetes on his journey to Troy, but all indicate that he received a wound on his foot that festered and had a terrible smell. One version holds that Philoctetes was bitten by a snake that Hera sent to molest him as punishment for his or his father's service to Heracles. Another tradition says that the Greeks forced Philoctetes to show them where Heracles's ashes were deposited. Philoctetes would not break his oath by speech, so he went to the spot and placed his foot upon the site. Immediately, he was injured in the foot that touched the soil over the ashes. Yet another tradition has it that when the Achaeans, en route to Troy at the beginning of the war, came to the island of Tenedos, Achilles angered Apollo by killing King Tenes, allegedly the god's son. When, in expiation, the Achaeans offered a sacrifice to Apollo, a snake came out from the altar and bit Philoctetes. Finally, it is said that Philoctetes received his terrible wound on the island of Chryse, when he unknowingly trespassed into the shrine of the nymph after whom the island was named (this is the version in the extant play by Sophocles).

Regardless of the cause of the wound, Philoctetes was exiled by the Greeks and was angry at the treatment he received from Odysseus, king of Ithaca, who had advised the Atreidae to strand him. Medôn took control of Philoctetes' men, and Philoctetes himself remained on Lemnos, alone, for ten years.

Helenus, the prophetic son of King Priam of Troy, was forced to reveal, under torture, that one of the conditions of the Greeks' winning the war was that they needed the bow and arrows of Heracles. Upon hearing this, Odysseus and a group of men (usually including Diomedes) rushed back to Lemnos to recover Heracles' weapons. (As Sophocles writes it in his play named Philoctetes, Odysseus is accompanied by Neoptolemus, Achilles' son, also known as Pyrrhus. Other versions of the myth don't include Neoptolemus.) Surprised to find the archer alive, the Greeks balked on what to do next. Odysseus tricked the weaponry away from Philoctetes, but Diomedes refused to take the weapons without the man. Once back in military company outside Troy, they employed Machaon the surgeon (who may had been killed Eripylus of Mysia, son of Telephus, depending on the account)or more likely Podalirius the physician, sons of the immortal physician Asclepius, to heal his wound permanently. Philoctetes challenged and killed Paris, son of Priam in single combat. In the debates over future Greek strategy, Philoctetes sided with Neoptolemus about continuing to try to storm the city. They were the only two to think so because they had not had war-weariness of the prior ten years. Afterward, Philoctetes was among those chosen to hide inside the Trojan Horse, and during the sack of the city he killed many famed Trojans.

After the war, he returned home to Meliboea, where he found a revolt. From there he went to Italy where he founded the towns of Petilia and Crimissa in Calabria and established the Brutti. He also aided Sicilian Greeks. When he died, he was buried next to the Sybaris River.

[edit] In modern literature

[edit] Drama

  • The legend of Philoctetes was used by André Gide in his play Philoctète.
  • Philoctetes appears in Seamus Heaney's play The Cure at Troy, a "version" of Sophocles' Philoctetes.

[edit] Poetry

  • The myth of Philoctetes is the inspiration for William Wordsworth's sonnet "When Philoctetes in the Lemnian Isle," though here the thematic focus is not the Greek warrior's magical bow or gruesome injury, but his abandonment. The poem is about the companionship and solace provided by Nature when all human society has been withdrawn.
  • Philoctetes appears as a character in two Michael Ondaatje poems, entitled "The Goodnight" and "Philoctetes On The Island." Both appear in his 1979 book, There's a trick with a knife I'm learning to do.
  • Philoctetes is mentioned in Poem VIII of "21 Love Poems" by Adrienne Rich:

"I can see myself years back at Sunion, hurting with an inflated foot, Philoctetes in woman's form, limping the long path, lying on a headland over the dark sea, looking down the red rocks to where a soundless curl of white told me a wave had struck, imagining the pull of that water from that height, knowing deliberate suicide wasn't my metier, yet all the time nursing, measuring that wound."

The Odyssey

[edit] Novels

  • Donna Jo Napoli's teen novel Sirena features a love affair between a mermaid and Philoctetes, interrupted when the Greeks come to retrieve him.
  • In the novel, "The Division Of The Spoils", the last part of "The Raj Quartet" by Paul Scott, filmed as the TV series "The Jewel In The Crown" in 1984, "Philoctetes" is used as his pen name by Hari Kumar for his articles in the Ranpur Gazette.
  • "An Arrow's Flight," a novel by Mark Merlis (St. Martin's Press, 1998), is the retelling of the Philoctetes story as a gay tragedy.

[edit] Cinema

  • The 1997 Disney animated movie Hercules takes considerable license with Greek myths. In it, Philoctetes (usually referred to simply as "Phil") is a satyr and a trainer of aspiring heroes who has often been disappointed by his trainees' shortcomings. This however, seems to be a confusion with the myth of Chiron, as Phil states that he trained Achilles and Jason of the Argonauts, both diciples of Chiron. After some initial reluctance, Phil agrees to train the callow young Hercules, and is ultimately gratified when the people of Thebes refer to the mighty and triumphant Hercules as "Phil's boy." He is also seen in the Disney/Square Enix video game Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II and the TV series House of Mouse, along with several other characters from the movie. The actor Danny DeVito provided Philoctetes's voice. Robert Costanzo provides his voice in video game and television reprisals of the character, and Ichirō Nagai does his Japanese voice.

[edit] Television

  • The Torchwood episode "Greeks Bearing Gifts" has the alien serial-killer Mary (played by Daniella Denby-Ashe) refer to herself as Philoctetes, in reference to his exile on Lemnos. She was transported to Earth for crimes which she described as "political" but her testimony is probably untrustworthy. Unlike classical Philoctetes, she is not recalled to her home but, rather, consigned by Captain Jack to the centre of the Sun.

[edit] Essays

  • Sophocles' play forms the basis of an essay by Edmund Wilson The Wound and the Bow, in the book of the same name.

[edit] In modern art

[edit] Painting

  • "Philoctetes on the Island of Lemnos" by James Barry, 1770, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna [1].

[edit] Sculpture

[edit] See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
v • d • e
Characters in the Iliad
Greeks
Trojans