Encyclopedia > Philoctetes

  Article Content

Philoctetes

In Greek mythology, Philoctetes was the son of King Peoas[?] of Meliboea in Thessaly.

Philoctetes was Heracles' friend and, because he lit Heracles' funeral pyre (or Iolaus did) when no one else would, he received Heracles' bow and arrows.

He sailed with seven ships full of men to the Trojan War, where he was planning on fighting for the Greeks. They stopped on Chryse for supplies and Philoctetes was bit by a snake. The wound festered and smelled horrible; Odysseus advised and the Atreidae ordered Philoctetes to stay on Lemnos. Medon took control Philoctetes' men. He was there on Lemnos, alone, for ten years.

Later, though, an Helenus, son of King Priam of Troy, was tortured until he revealed that one of the conditions of the Greeks winning the Trojan War was that they had the bow and arrows of Heracles. Odysseus and Neoptolemus retrieved Philoctetes from Lemnos. Philoctetes' wound was healed by Machaon or Asclepius. Philoctetes then killed Paris.

After the war, he went to Italy and founded Brutti[?].

Alternative: Philocthetes



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
KANU

... small minority tribes, such as the Kalenjin[?] to which Moi belonged, against the dominance of the big Luo[?] and Kikuyu tribes that comprised the majority of Kanu' ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 35 ms