Everything about Philoctetes totally explained
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.
The stories
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' poisoned arrows.
Philoctetes was stranded on the Island of
Lemnos or
Chryse by the Greeks before the start of the
Trojan War. 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 father's service to
Heracles. (As Poeas was the only one who would light Heracles' funeral pyre, Heracles bestowed on Poeas his magical bow and arrows, which in turn Poeas gave to his son.) Another tradition says that the Greeks forced Philoctetes to show them where Heracles's ashes were deposited. Philoctetes wouldn't 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's 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, 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 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.) Needless to say, they almost couldn't believe that Philoctetes was still alive after all that time, and once back in military company, they employed
Machaon or
Podalirius, sons of the gods' physician
Asclepius, to heal his wound permanently. Afterward, Philoctetes was among those chosen to hide inside the
Trojan Horse, and during the sack of the city he killed many famed Trojans, including
Paris, son of
Priam and husband of the beautiful
Helen. After the war, he went to
Italy where he founded the town of
Petilia in
Calabria and established the
Brutti.
In modern literature
Drama
The East German postmodern dramatist Heiner Müller produced a successful adaptation of Sophocles' play in 1968 in Munich. It became one of his most-performed plays.
Philoctetes appears in Seamus Heaney's play The Cure at Troy, a "version" of Sophocles' Philoctetes.
Poetry
The myth of Philoctetes is the inspiration for William Wordsworth's sonnet "When Philoctetes in the Lemnian Isle," though here the thematic focus isn't 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.
Derek Walcott's modern Caribbean epic, Omeros, includes a character named Philoctete; he receives a wound and clearly alludes to the Greek narrative.
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
Novels
The legend of Philoctetes was, in part, the inspiration for Robert Silverberg's science fiction novel The Man in the Maze.
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.
In Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano," Hugh Firmin escapes his British upbringing by enlisting as a sailor on the ship "Philoctetes."
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.
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 isn't recalled to her home but, rather, consigned by Captain Jack to the centre of the Sun.
Essays
Sophocles' play forms the basis of an essay by Edmund Wilson The Wound and the Bow, in the book of the same name.
In modern art
Painting
"Philoctetes on the Island of Lemnos" by James Barry, 1770, now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna (External Link
).
"The Wounded Philoctetes" by Nikolaj Abraham Abildgaard, 1775, now in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen (External Link).
"Philoctetes on Lemnos" by Jean Germain Drouais, 1788, now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Chartres (External Link).
Sculpture
"Wounded Philoctetes" by Herman Wilhelm Bissen, now in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen (External Link).
Further Information
Get more info on 'Philoctetes'.
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