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
Neoptolemus to them that they could defeat Troy if they could acquire the poisonous arrows of Heracles (then in Philoctetes' possession); steal the Palladium (which led to the building of the famous wooden horse of Troy); and put Achilles' son in the war. In response to the prophecy, the Greeks took steps to retrieve the arrows of Heracles and bring Neoptolemos to Troy. Odysseus was sent to retrieve Neoptolemos, then a mere teenager, from Scyros. The two then went to Lemnos to retrieve Philoctetes. Years earlier, on the way to Troy, Philoctetes was bitten by a snake on Chryse Island. Agamemnon