Philoctetes: Trojan warrior suffering chronic pain and isolation

Philoctetes
www.haverford.edu

Greek Mythology Quiz Question:

Q. What is the name of the mythological hero whom the ancient Greeks took as their role model for dealing with chronic pain?

A. His name is Philoctetes [fil-ahk-tee'-teez] from the eponymous Greek tragedy by Sophocles.

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The following, which you will find at the website of The Philoctetes Project (www.philoctetesproject.org), is the story of Philoctetes.

Philoctetes is a mythological character from the Greek tragedy by Sophocles, a warrior who was on his way to the Trojan War when a serpent bit him.

The smell of his wound was so noxious that he was left on the island of Lemnos and ostracized by his countrymen [for over10 years.—JCH]. When the war started, Cassandra, the seer, said that without the bow of Heracles, which is only possessed by Philoctetes and which he inherited from his father, the war could not be won. Many believe that it's the Trojan Horse that is the key to winning the war, but actually it's the bow of Heracles.

So the Argives have to humbly go back to Philoctetes and ask him to rejoin them. At first he says,

"No. From all the pain that you have given me, even if I could regain my glory, I reject you, even if it's at the cost of my own redemption. Even at the cost of reconstituting my own existence."

Eventually, there is a deus ex machina that comes in to relieve him of the burden of this decision, and so the Argives regain the bow and eventually go on to win the war.(Philoctetes Center Inc. www.philoctetes.org)

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Q. How might the story of Philoctetes prove useful to 20th Century readers suffering from chronic pain?

A. "In The Wound and the Bow: Seven Studies in Literature* (1941). Edmund Wilson modernizes the story of Philoctetes, tying the wound to psychic trauma and the bow to the healing power of insight. And so the creative personality is the one who uses art as a way of transcending trauma. The artist chooses the road of insight over that of pathology." (Philoctetes Center Inc.)

In symbolic, Wilsonian terms, the theme of the Phyloctetes myth could be stated thus:

The creative personality can transcend psychic trauma by using the healing power of artistic insight.—JCH

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*The Wound and the Bow: Seven Studies in Literature*, Edmund Wilson (Author), Janet Groth (Contributor). New York:Houghton Mifflin (1941).

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"Phrryus finds
Philoctetes in a Cave"

Artist unknown.
From The Baldwin Project,
"The Long Siege."

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