In the Trojan War tradition, Philoctetes killed Paris, the prince of Troy. Philoctetes used the bow and poisoned arrows of Heracles, making him one of the few Greek warriors able to defeat Paris from a distance.
The tradition says that Philoctetes had inherited Heracles’ weapons after helping the dying hero. On the voyage to Troy, Philoctetes was bitten by a snake and left behind on the island of Lemnos because his wound produced a terrible smell and constant cries of pain. Years later, the Greeks learned that Troy could not be captured without Heracles’ bow.
Odysseus and Neoptolemus brought Philoctetes back to the Greek army. He then used the bow to shoot Paris, who had taken Helen to Troy and helped cause the conflict. Paris was wounded by an arrow and later died after the nymph Oenone refused, or was unable, to heal him in different versions of the myth.
Philoctetes is also the central figure of Sophocles’ tragedy Philoctetes, which focuses on his abandonment and return rather than on the shooting of Paris.