Classical Mythology

454 THE GREEK SAGAS: GREEK LOCAL LEGENDS

and as the fleet sailed on, the stench from his wound became so noisome that

the Greeks abandoned him on the island of Lemnos, where he remained alone

and in agony for nearly ten years. Now Philoctetes' father, Poeas, had lit the fu-

neral pyre of Heracles and had in return been given Heracles' bow and arrows,

which Philoctetes later inherited. In the last year of the war, the Greeks captured

Priam's son Helenus, who prophesied that only with the aid of Heracles' bow

and arrows could Troy be captured. Accordingly, Odysseus and Diomedes

fetched Philoctetes from Lemnos. The sons of Asclepius, Podalirius and

Machaon, healed his wound, and with the arrows he shot Paris, thus removing

the most formidable of the surviving Trojan champions.^19

ACHILLES HEALS TELEPHUS

On the way to Troy the Greeks landed in Mysia, a district of Asia Minor. In the

battle against the Mysians, Achilles wounded the Mysian Telephus, a son of Her-

acles. When the wound would not heal, Telephus despairingly asked the Del-

phic oracle for advice. Learning that "he that wounded shall heal," he went to

the Greek army disguised as a beggar and asked Achilles to cure his wound.

Achilles said he could not, for he was not a doctor, but Odysseus pointed out

that it was Achilles' spear that had caused the wound. Scrapings from it were

applied, and Telephus was healed.

PROTESILAÙS AND LAODAMIA

When the Greeks reached Troy the first to leap ashore was Protesilaùs, who was

immediately killed by Hector. His wife, Laodamia, could not be comforted in

her grief. Pitying her, Hermes brought back her husband from Hades for a few

hours, and when he was taken away again, she killed herself. Another person

to die in the first skirmish was a Trojan, Cycnus, son of Poseidon, who was

turned into a swan. The Greeks successfully established a beachhead, made a

permanent camp with their ships drawn up on shore, and settled down to be-

siege Troy.

THE ILIAD

While the events of the first nine years of the war are obscure (since the epic po-

ems in which they were described survive only in prose summaries), those of

the tenth are in part brilliantly illuminated by the Iliad. The poem, however,

deals only with events from the outbreak of the quarrel between Achilles and

Agamemnon to the ransoming and burial of Hector.

Nine years were spent in a fruitless siege of Troy, varied only by abortive

diplomatic exchanges and raids against cities allied with Troy. The division of

the spoil from these cities led to the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles.