b. Some say that King Actor’s shepherd Phimachus, son of Dolophion, had sheltered Philoctetes and dressed his noisome wound for past ten years. Others record that some of Philoctetes’s troops settled beside him in Lemnos, and that the Asclepius cured him, with Lemnian earth, before the deputation arrived; or that Pylius, or Pelius, a son of Hephaestus, did so. Philoctetes is said then conquered certain small islands off the Trojan coast for the king Euneus, dispossessing the Carian population-a kindness that Euneus acknowledged by giving him the Lemnian district of Acesa. Thus, it is explained, Odysseus and Diomedes had no need to tempt Philoctetes with offers of medical treatment; he came willingly carrying his bow and arrows, to win the war for them and glory himself. According to still another account, the deputation found him long dead of the wound and persuaded his heirs to let them borrow the bow.
c. The truth is, however, that Philoctetes stayed in Lemnos painfully, until Odysseus tricked him into handing over the bow and arrows; but Diomedes (not, as some mistakenly say, Neoptolemus) declined to be implicated in the theft and advised Philoctetes to demand the return of his property. At this, the god Heracles intervened. ‘Go with them to Troy, Philoctetes,’ he said, ‘and I will send an Asclepid there to cure you; for Troy must fall asecond time to my arrows. You shall be chosen from among the Greeks as the boldest fighter of all! You shall kill Paris, take part in the sack of Troy, and send home rich spoils, reserving the noblest prize for your father Poeas. But remember: you cannot take Troy without Neoptolemus son of Achilles, nor can he do so without you!’
d. Philoctetes obeyed, and on his arrival at the Greek camp he bathed with fresh water and put to sleep in Apollo’s temple; and as he slept, Machaon the surgeon cut away the decaying flesh from the wound, poured in wine, and applied healing herbs and the serpentine stone. But some say that Machaon’s brother Podaleirius, the physician, took charge of the case.
e. No sooner was Philoctetes about again, than he challenged Paris to a combat in archery. The first arrow he shot went wide, the second pierced Paris’s bow-hand, the third blinded his right eye, and the fourth struck his ankle, wounding him mortally. Despite Menelaus attempt to despatch Paris, he contrived to hobble from the field, and take refuge in Troy. That night the Trojans carried him to Mount Ida, where he begged his former mistress, the nymph Oenone, to heal him; from an inveterate hatred of Helen, however, she cruelly shook her head and he was brought back to die. Presently Oenone relented, and ran to Troy with a basketful of healing drugs, but found him already dead. In a frenzy of grief she leaped from the walls, or hanged herself, or burned herself to death on his pyre-no one remembers which. Some excuse Oenone by saying that she would have healed Paris at once, had not her father prevented her; she was obliged to wait until he had left the house before bringing the simples, and then it proved too late.
f. Helenus and Deiphobus now quarrelled for Helen’s hand, and Priam supported Deiphobus’s claim on the ground that he had shown the greater valour; but, though her marriage to Paris had been divinely arranged, Helen could not forget that she was still Queen of Sparta and wife to Menelaus. One night, a sentry caught her tying a rope to the battlements in an attempt to escape. She was led before Deiphobus, who married her by force-much to the disgust of the other Trojans. Helenus immediately left the city and went to live with Arisbe on the slopes of Mount Ida.
g. Upon hearing from Calchas that Helenus alone knew the secret oracles which protected Troy, Agamemnon sent Odysseus to waylay and drag him to the Greek camp. Helenus happened to be staying as Chryses’s guest in the temple of Thymbraean Apollo, when Odysseus came in search of him, and proved ready enough to disclose the oracles, on condition that he would be given a secure home in some distant land. He had deserted Troy, he explained, not because he feared death, but because neither he nor Aeneas could overlook Paris’s sacrilegious murder of Achilles in this very temple, for which no amends had yet been made to Apollo.
h. ‘So be it. Hold nothing back, and I will guarantee your life and safety,’ said Odysseus.
‘The oracles are brief and clear,’ Helenus answered. ‘Troy falls this summer, if a certain bone of Pelops is brought to your camp; if Neoptolemus takes the field; and if Athene’s Palladium is stolen from the citadel-because the walls cannot be breached while it remains there.
Agamemnon at once sent to Pisa for Pelops’s shoulder-blade. Meanwhile, Odysseus, Phoenix, and Diomedes sailed to Scyros, where they persuaded Lycomedes to let Neoptolemus come to Troy-some say that he was then only twelve years old. The ghost of Achilles appeared before him on his arrival, and he forthwith distinguished himself both in council and in war, Odysseus gladly resigning Achilles’s arms to him.
i. Eurypylus son of Telephus now reinforced the Trojans with an army of Mysians, and Priam, who had offered his mother Astyoche a golden vine if he came, betrothed him to Cassandra. Eurypylus proved a resolute fighter, and killed Machaon the surgeon; which is why, in Asclepius’s sanctuary at Pergamus, where every service begins with a hymn celebrating Telephus, the name of his son Eurypylus may not be spoken on any occasion. Machaon’s bones were taken back to Pylus by Nestor, and sick people are healed in the sanctuary at Geraneia; his garlanded bronze statue dominates the sacred place called ‘The Rose’. Eurypylus himself was killed by Neoptolemus.
j. Shortly before the fall of Troy, the dissensions between Priam’s sons grew so fierce that he authorized Antenor to negotiate peace with Agamemnon. On his arrival at the Greek camp Antenor, out of hatred for Deiphobus, agreed to betray the Palladium and the city into Odysseus’s hands; his price was the kingship and half of Priam’s treasure. Aeneas, he told Agamemnon, could also be counted upon to help.
k. Together they concocted a plan, in pursuance of which Odysseus asked Diomedes to flog him mercilessly; then, bloodstained, filthy, and dressed in rags, he gained admittance into Troy as a runaway slave. Helen alone saw through his disguise, but when she privately questioned him, was fobbed off with evasive answers. Nevertheless, he could not decline an invitation to her house, where she bathed, anointed and clothed him in free robes; and his identity being thus established beyond question, swore a solemn oath that she would not betray him to the Trojans-so far she had confided only in Hecabe-if he revealed all the details of his plan to her. Helen explained that she was now kept a prisoner in Troy, and longed to go home. At this juncture, Hecabe entered. Odysseus at once threw himself at her feet, weeping for terror, and implored her not to denounce him. Surprisingly enough, she agreed. He then hurried back, guided by Hecabe, and reached iris friends in safety with a harvest of information; claiming to have killed a number of Trojans who would not open the gates for him.
l. Some say that Odysseus stole the Palladium on this occasion, single-handed. Others say that he and Diomedes, as favourites of Athene, were chosen to do so, and that they climbed up to the citadel by way of a narrow and muddy conduit, killed the sleeping guards, and together took possession of the image, which the priestess Theano, Antenor’s wife, willingly surrendered. The common account, however, is that Diomedes scaled the wall by climbing upon Odysseus’s shoulders, because the ladder was short, and entered Troy alone. When he reappeared, carrying the Palladium in his arms, the two of them set out for the camp, side by side, under a full moon; but Odysseus wanted all the glory. He dropped behind Diomedes, to whose shoulders the image was now strapped, and would have murdered him, had not the shadow of his sword caught Diomedes’s eye, the moon being still low in the heavens. He spun about, drew his own sword and, disarming Odysseus, twisted his hands and drove him back to the ships with repeated kicks and blows. Hence the phrase ‘Diomedes’s compulsion’, often applied to those whose actions are coerced.
m. The Romans pretend that Odysseus and Diomedes carried off a mere replica of the Palladium which was on public display, and that Aeneas, at the fall of Troy, rescued the authentic image, smuggled it out with the remainder of his sacred luggage, and brought it safe to Italy.
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1. All this is idle romance, or drama, except for the stealing of the Palladium, Hecabe’s mysterious refusal to betray Odysseus, and the death of Paris from a wound in his ankle. Pelops’s shoulder-blade was probably of porpoise-ivory. The account which makes Philoctetes succumb to poison of Heracles’s arrows dipped in the Hydra’s blood seems to be the earliest one.
2. Pausanias reports: ‘When the Greeks returned from Troy, the ship that carried the shoulder-blade of Pelops was sunk off Euboea in a storm. Many years later an Eretrian fisherman named Damarmenus (“subduer of sails”) drew up a bone in his net, which was of such astonishing size that he hid it in the sand while he went to ask the Delphic Oracle whose bone it was, and what ought to be done with it. Apollo had arranged that an Elean embassy should arrive that same day requiring a remedy for a plague. The Pythoness answered the Eleans: “Recover the shoulder-blade of Pelops.” To Damarmenus she said: “Give your bone to those ambassadors.” The Eleans rewarded him well, making the custodianship of the bone hereditary in his house. It was no longer to be seen when I visited Elis: doubtless age and the action of the sea-water in which it had lain so long had mouldered it away.’
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