Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/439



''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''.