Philoctetes facts for kids

He was killed by Philoctetes, an Achaean hero-king who had been abandoned by the others on the island of Lemnos after a venomous snake bit rendered him disabled and made his leg stink. Philoctetes survived (either alone, as Sophocles suggests, or with the help of the local population, as most other sources claim), and in the tenth year of the war the Achaeans heard of a prophecy dictating them to bring him back, if they wanted to see Troy fall. You see, Philoctetes had inherited Hercules’ bow and arrows, which were dipped in the blood of the Lernaean Hydra. Odysseus and Neoptolemus (with the now-deified Hercules’ help) persuaded Philoctetes to come back, and Asclepius’ sons, Machaon and Podaleirius, cured his leg. On his first fighting day, Philoctetes mortally wounded Paris with his arrows.

Images for kids

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  Philoctetes, wounded, is abandoned by the Greek expedition en route to Troy, detail of an Attic red-figure stamnos ca. 460 BC (Musée du Louvre)

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  Philoctetes on the Island of Lemnos, by Guillaume Guillon-Lethière.

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  Marble slab with the Recall of Philoctetes – Archeological Museum of Brauron

See also

In Spanish: Filoctetes para niños