ARGUMENT.
Philoctetes, son of Pœas, king of the Malians, of Œta, in Thessaly, wooed
Helena, the daughter of Tyndareus; and her father having bound him
and the other suitors by an oath, to defend her in case of wrong, he
joined the great expedition of the Hellenes against Troïa. And as he
landed at Chryse, treading rashly on the sacred ground of the nymph
from whom the island took its name, he was bitten in the foot by a
snake; and the wound became so noisome, and the cries of his agony
so sharp, that the host could not endure his presence, and sent him in
charge of Odysseus to Lemnos, and there he was left. And nine years
passed away, and Achilles had died, and Hector, and Aias, and yet
Troïa was not taken. But the Greeks took prisoner Helenos, a son of
Priam, who had the gift of prophecy, and they learnt from him that
it was decreed that it should never be taken but by the son of Achilles,
and with the bow of Heracles. Now, this bow was in the hands of
Philoctetes, for Heracles loved him, because he found him faithful;
and when he died on Œta, it was Philoctetes who climbed up the hill
with him, and prepared the funeral pyre, and kindled it: therefore
Heracles gave him his arrows and his bow. The Hellenes, then, first
sent to Skyros to fetch Neoptolemos, the son of Achilles, and then,
when he had arrived, they despatched him with Odysseus to bring
Philoctetes from Lemnos.
