The New Student's Reference Work/Philoctetes

Philoctetes (fil-ok-tē′tēz), a famous archer, the friend and armor-bearer of Hercules, who bequeathed him his bow and poisoned arrows. As one of the suitors of Helen he led seven ships against Troy; but being bitten in the foot by a snake or, according to one account, wounded by his own arrows, as his wound gave forth an unendurable stench, the Greeks left him on Lemnos, where he remained ten years. But an oracle declaring that Troy could not be taken without the aid of Philoctetes, Ulysses and Neoptolemus were sent to Lemnos to bring him to the Grecian camp, where, healed by Æsculapius or his sons, he slew Paris and otherwise assisted in the capture of Troy.