Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Healed and guided by Telephus, the Achaeans gathered a second time and finally set out for the Troad. On the way—at Tenedos, or at the island altar of Chryse near Lemnos, according to variant localizations—Philoctetes son of Poeas was bitten by a water-snake (guardian of the shrine). The wound festered, stank, and broke the army’s sleep with his cries. At Agamemnon’s and the chiefs’ decision—Odysseus often named as the agent—they put Philoctetes ashore on Lemnos with his bow (the bow of Heracles, bequeathed when Philoctetes or Poeas lit the Oetaean pyre) and sailed on without him. Sophocles’ tragedy opens years later on that same lonely shore: the abandonment is treated as a completed crime of convenience, the bow as indispensable destiny, and Lemnos as desolation. In the *Cypria* the episode sits between the second departure and the landing at Troy—one more cost extracted before the ships beach under Priam’s walls. Philoctetes’ return and the healing of his foot await the war’s endgame; this entry stops at the desertion.