The Journey to Troy: Philoktetes and Tennes (page 590, with art)

Chapter 16, The Trojan War

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♠ Dion Chrysostomos of Prusa 59

♠ Sophokles, Philoktetes 263-70

I am he whom the two marshalls and the Cephallenian king [265] shamelessly hurled to this solitude which you see, when I was wasting with a fierce disease, stricken by the savage bite of the murderous serpent. With that plague for my sole companion, boy, those men put me out [270] here alone and left, after they landed here with their fleet from sea-washed Chryse. Greek Text

♠ Sophokles, Philoktetes 1326-28

you suffer this plague’s affliction in accordance with god-sent fate, because you came near to Chryse‘s guardian, the serpent who secretly watches over her home and guards her roofless sanctuary. Greek Text

♦ Paris, Louvre G413: Attic red-figure stamnos by Hermonax, with statue of Chryse with snake at base and Agamemnon with scepter, wounded Philoktetes and youth, behind whom are Achilleus with spit and alarmed Diomedes

Photos Louvre, by Hervé Lewandowski

Beazley Archive Pottery Database

♠ Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.33.4

No long sail from Lemnos was once an island Chryse, where, it is said, Philoctetes met with his accident from the water-snake. But the waves utterly overwhelmed it, and Chryse sank and disappeared in the depths. Greek Text

♠ A Scholia at Homer, Iliad 2.722 – Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem I, pp. 127-28, ed. W. Dindorf and E. Maass. Oxford 1875.

Greek Text

♠ Hyginus, Fabulae 102

PHILOCTETES: When Philoctetes, son of Poeas and Demonassa, was on the island of Lemnos, a snake struck his foot. Juno had sent it, angry with him because he alone rather than the others had dared to build the funeral pyre of Hercules when his human body was consumed and he was raised to immortality. Because of the favour Hercules gave him his marvellous arrows. But when the Achaeans could not endure the offensive odour of the wound, by Agamemnon’s order he was left on Lemnos together with the marvellous arrows. A shepherd of King Actor, named Iphimachus, son of Dolops, cared for the abandoned man. Later an oracle was given to them that Troy could not be taken without the arrows of Hercules. Then Agamemnon sent Ulysses and Diomede as scouts to visit him. They persuaded him to be reconciled and to help in attacking Troy, and took him off with them. Latin Text

♠ Apollodoros, Epitome 3.27

and as they were offering a sacrifice to Apollo, a water-snake approached from the altar and bit Philoctetes; and as the sore did not heal and grew noisome, the army could not endure the stench, and Ulysses, by the orders of Agamemnon, put him ashore on the island of Lemnos, with the bow of Hercules which he had in his possession; and there, by shooting birds with the bow, he subsisted in the wilderness. Greek Text

♠ Servius, scholia at Vergil, Aeneid 3.402 – Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii Carmina commentarii: Aeneis, ed G. Thilo and H. Hagen, vol 1 pt 1, pp. 413-14. Leipzig 1881.

Latin Text

♠ Vatican Mythographer I 59 – Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini tres Romae nuper reperti 1, p. 21, ed. G. H. Bode. Celle 1834.

Latin Text

♠ Vatican Mythographer II 165 – Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini tres Romae nuper reperti 1, pp. 131-32, ed. G. H. Bode. Celle 1834.

Latin Text

♠ Scholia at Lychophron, Alexandra 911 – Lykophronis Alexandra, vol. 2, pp. 293-94, ed. E. Scheer. Berlin 1908.

Greek Text

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