In his Fabulae, the Latin writer Hyginus (64 BC–AD 17) reduced hundreds of ancient myths to a paragraph or two each. The Fabulae may lack the colour of the Greek epics and tragedies, but they provide useful overviews of their plots. The playwright Sophocles had written at length of the wretched plight of the Greek warrior Philoctetes in a tragedy in the fifth century BC. The story is set during the Trojan War and brings home just how unsympathetically the ancients looked upon physical disabilities.

When Philoctetes, the son of Poeas and Demonassa, was on the island of Lemnos, a snake bit him on his foot. This snake had been sent by Juno, who was angry at him because he was the only one who had the nerve to build a pyre for Hercules when he discarded his human body and was made immortal. In return for his service, Hercules bequeathed to him his divine arrows. But when the Achaeans could no longer put up with the foul odor that was coming from the wound, on King Agamemnon’s orders he was abandoned on Lemnos along with his divine arrows. A shepherd of King Actor named Iphimachus, the son of Dolopion, found him abandoned and took care of him. Later it was revealed to the Greeks that Troy could not be taken without Hercules’ arrows. Agamemnon then sent Ulysses and Diomedes to find him. They convinced him to let bygones be bygones and help them sack Troy, and they took him back to Troy with them.

SLAUGHTER OF THE HUSBANDS

Thebaid, Book V

Statius

Translated by William Lillington Lewis, 1767

The Aegean island of Lemnos, where Philoctetes was abandoned in the previous story, also features in the Thebaid of Statius (c. AD 45–c. 96). A Latin epic composed in the 80s or early 90s AD, the Thebaid retells the legend of the struggle of the sons of Oedipus for the throne of Thebes – dramatized some five centuries earlier by the Greek tragedian Aeschylus in his Seven Against Thebes. In Book V, Hypsipyle, daughter of the Lemnian king, tells her story to Adrastus, King of Argos. She describes how Venus took vengeance on the Lemnians for their failure to worship her by inspiring the women to murder the men. Hypsipyle alone saved her father. William Lillington Lewis’s verse translation of 1767, dedicated to Henry, Duke of Beaufort, brings out the sheer horror of the ensuing bloodbath.

Encircled by the Deep fair Lemnos lies;

Here weary Vulcan wastes his leisure Hours,

And recollects in Sleep his scatter’d Pow’rs.

The Cloud-capt Athos from his length’ning Steep

O’erlooks our Isle; his Groves o’ershade the Deep.

Each fronting Tract of Land the Thracian plows,

The Thracian, fatal to each Lemnian Spouse.

Once great in Arms and useful Arts it shone,

Fertile in Chiefs of Valour and Renown:

Not Delos, or the Samian Isle could claim

A greater Share of Riches and of Fame;

Till Heav’n to punish our Offence decreed.