Philoctetes for ten years. Helenus, the prophetic son of King Priam of Troy, was forced to reveal, under torture, that one of the conditions of the Greeks' winning the war was that they needed the bow and arrows of Heracles. Upon hearing this, Odysseus and a group of men (usually including Diomedes) rushed back to Lemnos to recover Heracles' weapons. (As Sophocles writes it in his play named "Philoctetes", Odysseus is accompanied by Neoptolemus, Achilles' son, also known as Pyrrhus. Other versions of the myth don't include Neoptolemus.) Surprised to find the archer alive, the Greeks balked on what to do
Returns from Troy Hecabe). The ghost of Achilles appeared before the survivors of the war, demanding that the Trojan princess Polyxena be sacrificed before anybody could leave, as either part of his spoil or because she had betrayed him. Neoptolemus did so. News of Troy's fall quickly reached the Achaean kingdoms through a system of fire relays. A fire signal lit at Troy was seen at Lemnos, relayed to Athos, then to the look-out towers of Macistus on Euboea, across the Euripus straight to Messapion, then to Mount Cithaeron, Mount Aegiplanctus and finally to Mount Arachneus where it was seen by the people