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 Neoptolemus Neoptolemus (; Ancient Greek: Νεοπτόλεμος, "Neoptolemos", "new warrior"), also called Pyrrhus (; Πύρρος, "Pyrrhos", "red", for his red hair), was the son of the warrior Achilles and the princess Deidamia in Greek mythology, and also the mythical progenitor of the ruling dynasty of the Molossians of ancient Epirus. In "Cypria", Achilles sails to Scyros after a failed expedition to Troy, marries princess Deidamia and has Neoptolemus, until Achilles is called to arms again. In a non-Homeric version of the story, Achilles' mother Thetis foretold many years before Achilles' birth that there would be a great war. She saw that