#seriously though poor philoctetes had to deal with that awful snake bite for years

[generouskittentidalwave]

What happened with Philoctetes being abandoned was used as a plot device for his character and future events and that's why I never use it to judge Odysseus's character. There, I said it.

The reason I say this? Is because back then the greeks came to an agreement that Philoctetes was left on the island of Lemnos after getting a snake bite, and that Odysseus convinced them to leave him behind.

However, despite all the research, I can never find exactly why Odysseus decided to leave him behind. Some imply that he didn't like all the cries from Philoctetes festering wound and left him behind, in others it's implied that he was forced to leave him behind by the others, others imply that it was a plan in order to find a way to get him back eventually, others imply that Odysseus saw him as a lost cause, that he would weigh them down, etc.. It seems like no one could agree on one thing or a reason why, just that it happened and that was basically it. They weren't really focused on giving Odysseus an in depth reasoning, just that he decided to leave Lemnos behind and that story would be a suprise tool that would help them later.

We may never know Odysseus's true thought process or reasonings as to why, as it is all left to be implied and seeing as there are many versions of Odysseus throughout both greek and modern history combined with the fact that there wasn't a universally agreed upon reasoning for it, I never use it to judge Odysseus's character as it feels impossible to do so.

For me personally, if I had to take an educated guess on his thought process seeing as we don't really know what it was, Odysseus doesn't seem like the kind of guy to just go- "hah, rotting foot? Must be a skill issue lmao" before then just dipping but I don't think he would just blindly be like "Nuuuh my friendo, my bestie has an ouchy we can't leave him behind like this!" Either. Odysseus's is a very complicated man, but was neither saint nor monster either, rather being the inbetween, and that was shown a lot in stories. So I wholeheartedly feel like it probably was the same situation with what happened with the other situations like Iphigenia, Troilus, Polyxena, etc.. where the man either offhandely makes the suggestion or does the hard decisions himself for reasons either known or unknown.

That's atleast my thoughts on it, I know everyone has there own thoughts on it as well ^^ and I could be wrong but please don't beat me over the head if I am ^^", that's just what I think about it all