There were, however, many different accounts of the manner in which Ajax had died, some of which are enumerated in the argument to the drama of Sophoklês. Ajax is never wounded in the Iliad: Æschylus made him invulnerable except under the armpits (see Schol. ad Sophok. Ajac. 833); the Trojans pelted him with mud—εἴ πως βαρηθείῃ ὑπὸ τοῦ πήλου (Schol. Iliad. xiv. 404).
[727] Soph. Philokt. 604.
[728] Soph. Philokt. 703. Ὦ μελέα ψυχὰ, Ὃς μηδ᾽ οἰνοχύτου πόματος Ἥσθη δεκετῆ χρόνον, etc.
In the narrative of Diktys (ii. 47), Philoktêtês returns from Lemnus to Troy much earlier in the war before the death of Achilles, and without any assigned cause.
[729] According to Sophoklês, Hêraklês sends Asklêpius to Troy to heal Philoktêtês (Soph. Philokt. 1415).
The subject of Philoktêtês formed the subject of a tragedy both by Æschylus and by Euripidês (both lost) as well as by Sophoklês.
[730] Argument. Iliad. Minor. Düntz. l. c. Καὶ τὸν νεκρὸν ὑπὸ Μενελάου καταικισθέντα ἀνελόμενοι θάπτουσιν οἱ Τρῶες. See Quint. Smyrn. x. 240: he differs here in many respects from the arguments of the old poems as given by Proclus, both as to the incidents and as to their order in time (Diktys, iv. 20). The wounded Paris flees to Œnônê, whom he had deserted in order to follow Helen, and entreats her to cure him by her skill in simples: she refuses, and permits him to die; she is afterwards stung with remorse, and hangs herself (Quint. Smyrn. x. 285-331; Apollodôr. iii. 12, 6; Conôn. Narrat. 23; see Bachet de Meziriac, Comment. sur les Epîtres d’Ovide, t. i. p. 456). The story of Œnônê is as old as Hellanikus and Kephalôn of Gergis (see Hellan. Fragm. 126, Didot).
[731] To mark the way in which these legendary events pervaded and became embodied in the local worship, I may mention the received practice in the great temple of Asklêpius (father of Machaôn) at Pergamus, even in the time of Pausanias. Têlephus, father of Eurypylus, was the local hero and mythical king of Teuthrania, in which Pergamus was situated. In the hymns there sung, the poem and the invocation were addressed to Têlephus; but nothing was said in them about Eurypylus, nor was it permitted even to mention his name in the temple,—“they knew him to be the slayer of Machaôn:” ἄρχονται μὲν ἀπὸ Τηλέφου τῶν ὕμνων, προσᾴδουσι δὲ οὐδὲν ἐς τὸν Εὐρύπυλον, οὐδὲ ἀρχὴν ἐν τῷ ναῷ θέλουσιν ὀνομάζειν αὐτὸν, οἷα ἐπιστάμενοι φονέα ὄντα Μαχάονος (Pausan. iii. 26, 7).
The combination of these qualities in other Homeric chiefs is noted in a subsequent chapter of his work, ch. xx. vol. ii.
[732] Argument. Iliad. Minor. p. 17, Düntzer. Homer, Odyss. xi. 510-520. Pausan. iii. 26, 7. Quint. Smyrn. vii. 553; viii. 201.