Epitome

But not knowing the course to steer for Troy, they put in to Mysia and ravaged it, supposing it to be Troy.[*](With the following account of the landing of the Greeks in Mysia and their encounter with Telephus, compare Proclus, in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, pp. 18ff.; Scholiast on Hom. Il. i.59. The accounts of both these writers agree, to some extent verbally, with that of Apollodorus and are probably drawn from the same source, which may have been the epic Cypria summarized by Proclus. The Scholiast tells us that it was Dionysus who caused Telephus to trip over a vine-branch, because Telephus had robbed the god of the honours that were his due. The incident is alluded to by Pind. I. 8.48(106)ff. The war in Mysia is narrated in more detail by Philostratus, Her. iii.28-36 and Dictys Cretensis ii.1-7. Philostratus, Her. 35 says that the wounded were washed in the waters of the hot Ionian springs, which the people of Smyrna called the springs of Agamemnon.) Now Telephus son of Hercules, was king of the Mysians, and seeing the country pillaged, he armed the Mysians, chased the Greeks in a crowd to the ships, and killed many, among them Thersander, son of Polynices, who had made a stand. But when Achilles rushed at him, Telephus did not abide the onset and was pursued, and in the pursuit he was entangled in a vine-branch and wounded with a spear in the thigh.

Departing from Mysia, the Greeks put to sea, and a violent storm coming on, they were separated from each other and landed in their own countries.[*](Compare Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 19, according to whom Achilles, on this return voyage, landed in Scyros and married his youthful love Deidamia, daughter of Lycomedes. See above, Apollod. 3.13.8.) So the Greeks returned at that time, and it is said that the war lasted twenty years.[*](Compare Hom. Il. 24.765ff., where Helen at Troy says that it was now the twentieth year since she had quitted her native land. The words have puzzled the Scholiasts and commentators, but are explained by the present passage of Apollodorus.) For it was in the second year after the rape of Helen that the Greeks,

Having again assembled at Aulis after the aforesaid interval of eight years, they were in great perplexity about the voyage, because they had no leader who could show them the way to Troy.

But Telephus, because his wound was unhealed, and Apollo had told him that he would be cured when the one who wounded him should turn physician, came from Mysia to Argos, clad in rags, and begged the help of Achilles, promising to show the course to steer for Troy. So Achilles healed him by scraping off the rust of his Pelian spear. Accordingly, on being healed, Telephus showed the course to steer,[*](This account of how Telephus steered the Greek fleet to Troy after being healed of his grievous wound by Achilles, is probably derived from the epic Cypria; since it agrees on these points with the brief summary of Proclus. See Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 19. Compare Scholiast on Hom. Il. i.59; Dictys Cretensis ii.10. As to the cure of Telephus's wound by means of the rust of the spear, see also Hyginus, Fab. 101; Prop. ii.1.63ff.; Ovid, Ex Ponto ii.2.6. Pliny describes a painting in which Achilles was represented scraping the rust from the blade of his spear with a sword into the wound of Telephus (Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxv.42, xxxiv.152). The spear was the famous one which Chiron had bestowed on Peleus, the father of Achilles; the shaft was cut from an ash-tree on Mount Pelion, and none of the Greeks at Troy, except Achilles, could wield it. See Hom. Il. 16.140-144; Hom. Il. 19.387-391; Hom. Il. 22.133ff. The healing of Telephus's wound by Achilles is also reported, though without mention of the spear, by Dictys Cretensis ii.10, a Scholiast on Hom. Il. i.59 and a Scholiast on Aristoph. Cl. 919. The subject was treated by Sophocles in a play called The Assembly of the Achaeans, and by Euripides in a play called Telephus. See The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, i.94ff.; Griechische Dichterfragmente. ii. Lyrische und dramatische Fragmente, ed. W. Schubart und U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (Berlin, 1907), pp. 64ff.; TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 161ff., 579ff. Aristophanes ridiculed the rags and tatters in which Telephus appeared on the stage in Euripides's play (Aristoph. Acharn. 430ff.). Apollodorus may have had the passage of Euripides or the parody of Aristophanes in mind when he describes Telephus as clad in rags. The cure of a wound by an application to it of rust from the weapon which inflicted the hurt is not to be explained, as Pliny supposed, by any medicinal property inherent in rust as such, else the rust from any weapon would serve the purpose. It is clearly a folklore remedy based on the principle of sympathetic magic. Similarly Iphiclus was cured of impotence by the rust of the same knife which had caused the infirmity. See Apollod. 1.9.12. The proverbial remedy for the bite of a dog “the hair of the dog that bit you,” is strictly analogous in principle; for it is not the hair of any dog that will work the cure, but only the hair of the particular dog that inflicted the bite. Thus we read of a beggar who was bitten by a dog, at the vicarage of Heversham, in Westmoreland, and went back to the house to ask for some of the animal's hair to put on the wound. See W. Henderson, Notes on the Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England (London, 1879), p. 160, note 1. A precisely similar remedy for similar hurts appears to be popular in China; for we hear of a missionary who travelled about the province of Canton accompanied by a powerful dog, which bit children in the villages through which his master passed; and when a child was bitten, its mother used to run after the missionary and beg for a hair from the dog's tail to lay on the child's wound as a remedy. See N. B. Dennys, The Folklore of China (London and Hongkong, 1876), p. 52. For more examples of supposed cures based on the principle of sympathy between the animal who bites and the person who is bitten, see W. Henderson, l.c.; W. G. Black, Folk-Medicine (London, 1883), pp. 50ff.; W. Gregor, Notes on the Folklore of the North-East of Scotland (London, 1881), p. 127.) and

But when they had put to sea from Argos and arrived for the second time at Aulis, the fleet was windbound, and Calchas said that they could not sail unless the fairest of Agamemnon's daughters were presented as a sacrifice to Artemis; for the goddess was angry with Agamemnon, both because, on shooting a deer, he had said, “ Artemis herself could not ( do it better),”[*](Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 183. The full expression is reported by the Scholiast on Hom. Il. 1.108, οὐδὲ ἡ Ἄρτεμις οὕτως ἂν ἐτόξευσε, “Not even Artemis could have shot like that.” The elliptical phrase is wrongly interpreted by the Sabbaitic scribe. See the Critical Note.) and because Atreus had not sacrificed to her the golden lamb.

On receipt of this oracle, Agamemnon sent Ulysses and Talthybius to Clytaemnestra and asked for Iphigenia, alleging a promise of his to give her to Achilles to wife in reward for his military service. So Clytaemnestra sent her, and Agamemnon set her beside the altar, and was about to slaughter her, when Artemis carried her off to the Taurians

After putting to sea from Aulis they touched at Tenedos. It was ruled by Tenes, son of Cycnus and Proclia, but according to some, he was a son of Apollo. He dwelt there because he had been banished by his father.[*](The following story of Tenes, his stepmother's calumny, his banishment, and his elevation to the throne of Tenedos, is similarly told by Paus. 10.14.2-4; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 232; Scholiast on Hom. Il. 1.38; Eustathius on Hom. Il. i.38, p. 33. Eustathius and the Scholiast on Homer call Tenes's sister Leucothea, and give Polyboea as an alternative name of their stepmother. According to Pausanias, the first wife of Cycnus was a daughter of Clytius, not of Laomedon. As to the names, Tzetzes agrees with Apollodorus, whom he probably copied. A rationalized version of the story is told by Diod. 5.83. According to him, Tenes was worshipped after his death as a god by the people of Tenedos, who made a precinct for him and offered sacrifices to him down to late times. No flute-player was allowed to enter the precinct, because a flute-player had borne false witness against Tenes; and the name of Achilles might not be mentioned within it, because Achilles had killed Tenes. Compare Plut. Quaest. Graec. 28.)

For Cycnus had a son Tenes and a daughter Hemithea by Proclia, daughter of Laomedon, but he afterwards married Philonome, daughter of Tragasus; and she fell in love with Tenes, and, failing to seduce him, falsely accused him to Cycnus of attempting to debauch her, and in witness of it she produced a flute-player, by name Eumolpus.

Cycnus believed her, and putting him and his sister in a chest he set them adrift on the sea. The chest was washed

So when the Greeks were standing in for Tenedos, Tenes saw them and tried to keep them off by throwing stones, but was killed by Achilles with a sword-cut in the breast, though Thetis had forewarned Achilles not to kill Tenes, because he himself would die by the hand of Apollo if he slew Tenes.[*](Compare Plut. Quaest. Graec. 28. Plutarch mentions the warning given by Thetis to Achilles not to kill Tenes, and says that the goddess specially charged one of Achilles's servants to remind her son of the warning. But in scouring the island Achilles fell in with the beautiful sister of Tenes and made love to her; Tenes defended his sister against her seducer, and in the brawl was slain by Achilles. When the slayer discovered whom he had slain, he killed the servant who ought to have warned him in time, and he buried Tenes on the spot where the sanctuary was afterwards dedicated to his worship. This version of the story clearly differs from the one followed by Apollodorus.)

and as they were offering a sacrifice to Apollo, a water-snake approached from the altar and bit Philoctetes; and as the sore did not heal and grew noisome, the army could not endure the stench, and Ulysses, by the orders of Agamemnon, put him ashore on the island of Lemnos, with the bow of Hercules which he had in his possession; and there, by shooting birds with the bow, he subsisted in the wilderness.[*](This story of the exposure and desertion of Philoctetes in Lemnos appears to have been told in the epic Cypria, as we may judge by the brief summary of Proclus. See Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 19. According to Proclus, the Greeks were feasting in Tenedos when Philoctetes was bitten by a water-snake. This is not necessarily inconsistent with the statement of Apollodorus that the accident happened while the Greeks were sacrificing to Apollo, for the feast mentioned by Proclus may have been sacrificial. According to another version of the story, which Sophocles followed in his Philoctetes, the accident to Philoctetes happened, not in Tenedos, but in the small island of Chryse, where a goddess of that name was worshipped, and the serpent which bit Philoctetes was the guardian of her shrine. See Soph. Phil. 263-270; Soph. Phil. 1326-1328. Later writers identified Chryse with Athena, and said that Philoctetes was stung while he was cleansing her altar or clearing it of the soil under which it was buried, as Tzetzes has it. See Scholiast on Hom. Il. ii.722; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 911; Eustathius on Hom. Il. ii.724, p. 330. But this identification is not supported by Sophocles nor by the evidence of a vase painting, which represents the shrine of Chryse with her name attached to her image. See Jebb's Soph. Ph., p. xxxviii, section 21.; Baumeister, Denkmäler des klassischen Altertums, iii.1326, fig. 1325. The island of Chryse is no doubt the “desert island near Lemnos” in which down to the first century B.C. were to be seen “an altar of Philoctetes, a bronze serpent, a bow, and a breastplate bound with fillets, the memorial of his sufferings” (Appian, Mithridat. 77). The island had sunk in the sea before the time of Pausanias in the second century of our era (Paus. 8.33.4). According to a different account, the unfortunate encounter of Philoctetes with the snake took place in Lemnos itself, the island where he was abandoned by his comrades. See Scholiast on Hom. Il. ii.724, p. 330 and Eustathius on Hom. Il. ii.724, p. 330; Scholiast on Soph. Ph. 270; Hyginus, Fab. 102. Philoctetes was commonly supposed to have received the bow and arrows of Hercules from that hero as a reward for his service in kindling the pyre on Mount Oeta. See Soph. Phil. 801-803; Diod. 4.38.4; Scholiast on Hom. Il. ii.724; Hyginus, Fab. 102; Ov. Met. 9.229-234. According to one account, which Servius has preserved, it was from these arrows, envenomed with the poison of the hydra, and not from a serpent, that Philoctetes received his grievous hurt. It is said that Hercules on the pyre solemnly charged his friend never to reveal the spot where his ashes should repose. Philoctetes promised with an oath to observe the wish of his dying friend, but afterwards he betrayed the secret by stamping with his foot on the grave. Hence on his way to the war one of the poisoned arrows fell upon and wounded the traitor foot. See Serv. Verg. A. 3.402; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 21, 132 (First Vatican Mythographer 59; Second Vatican Mythographer 165). Homer speaks of Philoctetes marooned by the Greeks in Lemnos and suffering agonies from the bite of the deadly water-snake (Hom. Il. 2.721-725), but he does not say how or where the sufferer was bitten. Sophocles represents Lemnos as a desert island (Soph. Phil. 1ff.). The fate of the forlorn hero, the ancient Robinson Crusoe, dwelling for ten years in utter solitude on his lonely isle, was a favourite theme of tragedy. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides all composed plays on the subject under the title of Philoctetes. See Dio Chrysostom lii; Jebb's Introduction to Soph. Ph., pp. xiiiff.; TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 79ff., 613ff. )

Putting to sea from Tenedos they made sail for Troy, and sent Ulysses and Menelaus to demand the restoration of Helen and the property. But the Trojans, having summoned an assembly, not only refused to restore Helen, but threatened to kill the envoys.

These were, however, saved by Antenor;[*](As to the embassy of Ulysses and Menelaus to Troy to demand the surrender of Helen, see Hom. Il. 3.205ff.; Hom. Il. 11.138ff.; Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 19; Bacch. 14(15), ed. Jebb; Hdt. 2.118; Tzetzes, Antehomerica 154ff.; Scholiast on Hom. Il. iii.206. According to the author of the epic Cypria, as reported by Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 19, the embassy was sent before the first battle, in which Protesilaus fell (see below); according to Tzetzes, it was sent before the Greek army assembled at Aulis; according to the Scholiast on Hom. Il. iii.206, it was despatched from Tenedos. Herodotus says that the envoys were sent after the landing of the army in the Troad. Sophocles wrote a play on the subject of the embassy, called The Demand for the Surrender of Helen. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 171ff.; The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. i. pp. 121ff. Libanius has bequeathed to us two imaginary speeches, which are supposed to have been delivered by the Greek ambassadors, Menelaus and Ulysses, to the Trojan assembly before the opening of hostilities, while the Greek army was encamped within sight of the walls of Troy. See Libanius, Declam. iii. and iv. (vol. v. pp. 199ff., ed. R. Foerster).)

Of the Greeks the first to land from his ship was Protesilaus, and having slain not a few of the barbarians, he fell by the hand of Hector.[*](Compare Hom. Il. 2.698-702; Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 19; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 245; Tzetzes, Chiliades ii.759ff.; Tzetzes, Antehomerica 221ff.; Eustathius on Hom. Il. ii.701, p. 325, and on Od. xi.521, p. 1697; Paus. 4.2.5; Hyginus, Fab. 103; Dictys Cretensis ii.11. The common tradition, followed by Apollodorus, was that Protesilaus fell by the hand of Hector; but according to others, his slayer was Aeneas, or Achates, or Euphorbus. See Eustathius on Hom. Il. ii.701, p. 325, and on Od. xi.521, p. 1697; Tzetzes, Antehomerica 230ff. The Greeks had received an oracle that the first of their number to leap from the ships would be the first to perish. See Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 245; Hyginus, Fab. 113; Ovid, Her. xiii.93ff. Protesilaus was reckoned by Paus. 1.34.2 among the men who after death received divine honours from the Greeks. He was buried in the Thracian Chersonese, opposite the Troad, and was there worshipped as a god (Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 532). His grave at Elaeus, or Eleus, in the peninsula was enclosed in a sacred precinct, and his worshippers testified their devotion by dedicating to him many vessels of gold and silver and bronze, together with raiment and other offerings; but when Xerxes invaded Greece, these treasures were carried off by the Persians, who desecrated the holy ground by sowing it with corn and turning cattle loose on it to graze (Hdt. 9.116). Tall elms grew within the sacred precinct and overshadowed the grave; and it is said that the leaves of the trees that looked across the narrow sea to Troy, where Protesilaus perished, burgeoned early but soon faded and fell, like the hero himself, while the trees that looked away from Troy still kept their foliage fresh and fair. See Philostratus, Her. iii.1. Others said that when the elms had shot up so high that Troy could be seen from them away across the water, the topmost boughs immediately withered. See Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica vii.408ff.; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xvi.238.) His wife Laodamia loved him even after his death, and she made an image of him and consorted with it. The gods had pity on her, and Hermes brought up Protesilaus from Hades. On seeing him, Laodamia

On the death of Protesilaus, Achilles landed with the Myrmidons, and throwing a stone at the head of Cycnus, killed him.[*](Compare Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 19; Pind. O. 2.82(147); Aristot. Rh. 2.1396b 16-18; Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica iv.468ff.; Tzetzes, Antehomerica 257ff.; Scholiast on Theocritus xvi.49; Ov. Met. 12.70-140; Dictys Cretensis ii.12. Cycnus was said to be invulnerable (Aristot. Rh. 2.1396b 16-18): hence neither the spear nor the sword of Achilles could make any impression on his body, and the hero was reduced to the necessity of throttling him with the thongs of his own helmet. So Ovid tells the tale, adding that the seagod, his father Poseidon, changed the dead Cycnus into a swan, whose name (Cygnus, κύκνος) he had borne in life.) When the barbarians saw him dead, they fled to the city, and the Greeks, leaping from their ships, filled the plain with bodies. and having shut up the Trojans, they besieged them; and they drew up the ships.

The barbarians showing no courage, Achilles waylaid Troilus and slaughtered him in the sanctuary of Thymbraean Apollo,[*](Compare Proclus in Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. G. Kinkel, p. 20; Scholiast on Hom. Il. xxiv.257 (where for ὀχευθῆναι it has been proposed to read λοχηθῆναι or λογχευθῆναἰ; Eustathius on Hom. Il. xxiv.251,p. 1348; Dio Chrysostom xi. vol. i. p. 189, ed. L. Dindorf; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 307-313; Verg. A. 1.474ff.; Serv. Verg. A. 1.474; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. p. 66 (First Vatican Mythographer 210). Troilus is represented as a youth, but the stories concerning his death are various. According to Eustathius, the lad was exercising his horses in the Thymbraeum or sanctuary of the Thymbraean Apollo, when Achilles killed him with his spear. Tzetzes says that he was a son of Hecuba by Apollo, though nominally by Priam, that he fled from his assailant to the temple of Apollo, and was cut down by Achilles at the altar. There was a prophecy that Troy could not be taken if Troilus should live to the age of twenty (so the First Vatican Mythographer). This may have been the motive of Achilles for slaying the lad. According to Dictys Cretensis iv.9, Troilus was taken prisoner and publicly slaughtered in cold blood by order of Achilles. The indefatigable Sophocles, as usual, wrote a tragedy on the subject. See The Fragments of Sophocles, ed. A. C. Pearson, vol. ii. pp. 253ff. ) and coming