Philoctetes

Philoctetes is also mentioned in Homer's Iliad, Book 2, which describes his exile on the island of Lemnos, his being wounded by snake-bite, and his eventual recall by the Greeks.

Philoctetes had been one of the many eligible Greeks who competed for the hand of Helen, the Spartan princess; as such, he was required to participate in the expedition to reclaim her for Menelaus that became the Trojan War.

The snakebite recurs in a version that has the Achaeans, en route to Troy, coming to the island of Tenedos, where Achilles angered Apollo by killing King Tenes, allegedly the god's son.

Helenus, the prophetic son of King Priam of Troy, was forced under torture to reveal that one of the conditions for the Greeks to win the war was possession of the bow and arrows of Heracles.

Upon hearing this, Odysseus and a group of men (usually including Diomedes) rushed back to Lemnos to recover Heracles' weapons.

The divine Heracles came down from Olympus and told Philoctetes to go and that he would be healed by the son of Asclepius and win great honor as a hero of the Achaean army.

Philoctetes challenged and would have killed Paris, son of Priam, in single combat were it not for the debates over future Greek strategy.

[11] According to Lycophron, at Macalla the inhabitants built a great shrine above his grave and glorified him as an everlasting god with libations and sacrifice of oxen.

[12] Justin writes that people say that the city of Thurii was built by Philoctetes and his monument is seen there even to his days, as well as the arrows of Hercules which laid up in the temple of Apollo.

[15] On a barren island near Lemnos there was an altar of Philoctetes with a brazen serpent, bows and breastplate bound with strips, to remind of the sufferings of the hero.

Philoctetes at Lemnos, on an Attic red-figure lekythos , ca. 420 BC (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
The isolation of Philoctetes on Lemnos, as painted by Jean-Charles-Joseph Rémond (1818)
Philoctetes wearing a pilos cap on a bronze coin of Homolium , with a coiled serpent on the reverse (350 BC)
Philoctetes hunting for sustenance on Lemnos, oil painting by Pierre Cabanel (1838–1918)
Fragmentary relief , before mid-2nd century AD, depicting the recall of Philoctetes (Archeological Museum of Brauron )
The attempt to cleanse the wounded foot of Philoctetes, depicted on a silver cup from the Hoby treasure (1st century AD)
Den sårede Filoktet ("The Wounded Philoctetes") by Nicolai Abildgaard (oil on canvas, 1775)
Philoctetes on the Island of Lemnos by Guillaume Guillon-Lethière