Philoctētes

, son of Pœan and Demon a a, was one of the Argonauts, according to Flaccus and Hyginus, and the arm-bearer and particular friend of Hercules. He was present at the death of Hercules, and because he had erected the burning pile on which the hero was consumed, he received from him the arrows which had been dipped in the gall of the hydra, after he had bound himself by a solemn oath not to betray the place where his ashes were deposited. He had no sooner paid the last office to Hercules, than he returned to Melibœa, where his father reigned. From thence he visited Sparta, where he became one of the numerous suitors of Helen, and soon after, like the rest of those princes who had courted the daughter of Tyndarus, and who had bound themselves to protect her from injury, he was called upon by Menelaus to accompany the Greeks to the Trojan war, and he immediately set sail from Melibœa with seven ships, and repaired to Aulis, the general rendezvous of the combined fleet. He was here prevented from joining his countrymen, and the offensive smell which arose from a wound in his foot, obliged the Greeks, at the instigation of Uly es, to remove him from the camp, and he was accordingly carried to the island of Lemnos, or, as others say, to Chryse, where Phimachus the son of Dolophion was ordered to wait upon him. In this solitary retreat he was suffered to remain for some time, till the Greeks, on the tenth year of the Trojan war, were informed by the oracle that Troy could not be taken without the arrows of Hercules, which were then in the po e ion of Phi loc tetes. Upon this Uly es, accompanied by Diomedes, or, according to others, by Pyrrhus, was commi ioned by the rest of the Grecian army to go to Lemnos, and to prevail upon Phi loc tetes to come and finish the tedious siege. Phi loc tetes recollected the ill-treatment which he had received from the Greeks, and particularly from Uly es, and therefore he not only refused to go to Troy, but he even persuaded Pyrrhus to conduct him to Melibœa. As he embarked, the manes of Hercules forbade him to proceed, but immediately to repair to the Grecian camp, where he should be cured of his wounds, and put an end to the war. Phi loc tetes obeyed, and after he had been restored to his former health by Æsculapius, or, according to some, by Machaon, or Podalirus, he destroyed an immense number of the Trojan enemy, among whom was Paris the son of Priam, with the arrows of Hercules. When by his valour Troy had been ruined, he set sail from Asia, but as he was unwilling to visit his native country, he came to Italy, where, by the a istance of his The alian followers, he was enabled to build a town in Calabria, which he called Petilia. Authors disagree about the causes of the wound which Phi loc tetes received on the foot. The most ancient mythologists support that it was the bite of the serpent which Juno had sent to torment him, because he had attended Hercules in his last moments, and had buried his ashes. According to another opinion, the princes of the Grecian army obliged him to discover where the ashes of Hercules were deposited, and as he had made an oath not to mention the place, he only with his foot struck the ground where they lay, and by this means concluded he had not violated his solemn engagement. For this, however, he was soon after punished, and the fall of one of the poisoned arrows from his quiver upon the foot which had struck the ground, occasioned so offensive a wound, that the Greeks were obliged to remove him from their camp. The sufferings and adventures of Phi loc tetes are the subject of one of the best tragedies of Sophocles, Virgil , Æneid , bk. 3 , li. 46 .— Pindar , Pythian , poem 1.— Dictys Cretensis , bk. 1 , ch. 14 .— Seneca , Hercules .— Sophocles , Phi loc tetes .— Quintus Calaber [Smyrnæus] , bks. 9 & 10.— Hyginus , fables 26, 97, & 102.— Diodorus , bks. 2 & 4.— Ovid , Metamorphoses , bk. 13 , li. 329 ; bk. 9 , li. 234 ; Tristia , bk. 5 , poem 2.— Cicero , Tusculanæ Dis put at i ones , ch. 2 .— Ptolemy , Hephæstion , ch. 6 .