Reshaping the Nature of Heroes: Heracles, Philoctetes and the Bow in Quintus Smyrnaeus’ Posthomerica

In the second part of Book & of Quintus’ Posthomerica, Odysseus and Diomedes must momentarily abandon the battlefield and travel to the island of Lemnos in order to bring Philoctetes to Troy. During the Achaean fleet’s initial voyage towards Troy, the hero is famously abandoned on Lemnos after having been bitten by a snake. As the myth narrates, Philoctetes, an exceptional archer, is the rightful possessor of the bow of He acles, which the hero donated to him while on his funeral pyre.# This bow – the famous toxon of Heracles, the mighty ero – is always described and treated as if it were more than a mere weapon. In this, Quintus makes no exception. Nevertheless, he addresses this extraordinary weapon in an original way. The aim of this chapter is to examine the way in which Quintus deals with the famous myth regarding Heracles, Philoctetes and the siege of Troy. It contextualises it within the mythic tradition, highlighting where Quintus follows the predominant tradition as well as the moments where he chooses original or underexploited paths to describe this exceptional weapon. In his short description of the bow’s story and construction, Quintus carefully chooses every word and model, deciding which to follow and which to alter. By choosing and partially altering the literary models of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Quintus presents a bow with a similar technical structure to the weapons possessed by some important archers of the Iliad and, most of all, by Odysseus in the Odyssey. Quintus’ elaboration of the previous epic models, together with his choice to describe the bow as a weapon constructed by Heracles himself, provides a new portrayal, both for the internal and the external audience, of Philoctetes: he is a mighty hero who possesses a mighty weapon and is a warrior and a leader in line with Heracles and the most important heroes of the Achaeans.