Philoctetes (pronounced \u201cphil-ah-sit-ees,\u201d rhyming with \u201cphilosophies\u201d) is the story of a mythical war hero in the Sophocles tragedy.<\/p>\n
Sophocles was an Ancient Greek tragedian who wrote his plays with his characters\u2019 suffering being the highlights of the story. In the case of Philoctetes, the wound on his foot was his great suffering. The odor from the injury combined with the subsequent physical weakness led to Philocetetes being stranded on the island of Lemnos for 10 years.<\/p>\n
Somehow, Philocetetes managed to stay alive for those 10 years. Then a captured Trojan seer revealed that the bow and arrows in his possession were the keys to winning the Trojan War<\/a>. Apparently, Philocetetes himself was part of that key as well.<\/p>\n Heracles had been forced to wear the Shirt of Nessus<\/a> due to suspicion of unfaithfulness by his wife. The Shirt was unbearably painful for Heracles. So in the Philoctetes version, he built his own funeral pyre, and Philoctetes lit it when no one else would. Though according to some versions, his father, King Poeas, did. Before he died, Heracles gave Philocetetes a bow with poison arrows as a gift. Heracles<\/a> was immediately deified upon his death.<\/p>\n Next, Philocetetes joined the competition for Helen, Princess of Sparta. In order to do so, he had to make an agreement with the King of Sparta<\/a>, Menelaus, to fight in the Trojan War for her reclaim.<\/p>\n However, he was left stranded on Lemnos when he sustained a wound on his foot. Accounts about the wound on Philocetetes\u2019 foot differ depending on the source. For example, one says that when he refused to reveal where he had put Heracles\u2019 ashes to the Greek citizens, he took them to the spot but put his foot on top of them and was immediately wounded.<\/p>\n The only thing that all accounts agree on is that his wound festered and gave off an odour. That\u2019s why his fleet abandoned him. Odysseus made the proposal.<\/p>\n Odysseus<\/a> claimed that the odour of Philocetetes\u2019 wound made it impossible even to pray to the gods.<\/p>\n However, after the Trojan seer was coerced into telling the Greeks that they needed the bow and arrows of Heracles in Philocetetes\u2019 possession to capture Troy, Odysseus and his men traveled back to Lemnos. They were convinced that it was almost guaranteed that Philocetetes would be dead by then.<\/p>\n Inevitably, they were shocked that he wasn\u2019t.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n As a result, Odysseus immediately tried to hatch a plan to trick Philoctetes into giving up the bow and arrows. However, one of Odysseus’s men, Diomedes, felt that it would be wrong to just trick Philoctetes into giving up the bow and arrow and then leave him stranded again.<\/p>\n Then Heracles appeared to Philocetetes from Mt. Olympus<\/a>, telling him to rejoin the war in Troy. However, first, Odysseus and his men were to take him to one of the god, Asclepius<\/a>\u2019 sons, to be healed from his wound.<\/p>\nThe Story<\/h3>\n