Meliboea () — a Homeric kingdom of the Odyssey, c. 1200 BC

Meliboea — Seven ships of pure bowmen — whose archer-king was left nine years to rot on Lemnos, then fetched in the last year to loose the shaft that felled Paris.

Philoktetes' Magnesian coast-realm of seven ships, all archers, whose leader was abandoned on Lemnos with a festering snake-wound and only brought to Troy in year 10 — where he slew Paris with the bow of Heracles. Now, in the season of the returns, he is named among the few who came home whole.

Leader at Troy: Philoktetes.

Ruler in the Odyssey's present: Philoktetes.

Role in the Trojan War: Achaean. Seven ships of picked bowmen from the Magnesian shore under Philoktetes the cunning archer; abandoned on Lemnos with a snake-wound and led in his absence by Medon, the contingent was reunited with its king in year 10 to fulfil the prophecy, and Philoktetes slew Paris with the great bow of Heracles.

The homecoming: One of the few who came home whole — the archer who felled Paris.

Along the Magnesian shore, where the land curls south past Pelion into the sea, lay the four towns of Philoktetes son of Poias — Methone and Thaumakie, Meliboia that gives the realm its name, and rugged Olizon. From them sailed but seven ships, the smallest of contingents; yet every man aboard was a bowman. In each of the seven, the Catalogue records, went fifty oarsmen 'skilled to fight amain with the bow' — a fleet of archers led by 'the cunning archer' himself, keeper of the great bow of Heracles, given him at Oita when he lit the pyre of the dying hero.\n\nBut the realm went to war maimed. On the voyage out — at the little isle of Chryse, where he sailed to show the way to the altar — Philoktetes was bitten by a deadly water-snake; and when the wound would not heal and its stench grew unbearable to the host, the sons of the Achaians left him behind 'sick of a grievous wound' on goodly Lemnos, by Odysseus' counsel. There he lay pining for nine long years while Troy stood. His seven ships were not left leaderless: Medon marshalled them, the bastard son of Oileus and half-brother of Aias the Locrian — a man who dwelt far from his own country, an exile for a killing, and who in the great fight for the ships stood in the van of the Phthians to hold back the Trojans. So the Meliboian bowmen fought the whole war for their absent king.\n\nThen came the reckoning of prophecy. It was foretold — through Helenos, the Trojan seer taken captive — that Troy could never fall without the bow of Heracles. So the Argives 'were soon to bethink them beside their ships of king Philoktetes': Odysseus went with Diomedes to Lemnos and, by craft, brought back both the man and his weapon. Healed at last in the camp, the archer of Meliboia paid the war its price in a single arrow. On the field he smote the Trojans down — and it was by Philoktetes' hand, at the wall, that Paris was doomed to die, shot with the shafts of Heracles, so that the thief of Helen crawled back wounded to Oenone on Ida to breathe out his life. Even Odysseus, no mean archer, confessed before the Phaeacians that 'alone Philoctetes in the Trojan land surpassed me with the bow in our Achaean archery.'\n\nAnd so, in this season of the nostoi, Meliboia is spared the horror that swallowed so many houses. When Telemachos sits in the halls of Pylos, old Nestor tells over the returns: safely came the Myrmidons under Achilles' son, and 'safely Philoctetes, the glorious son of Poias.' He is named in the same breath as the blessed few — with Neoptolemus of the Myrmidons, that other hero the prophecy demanded, and with Idomeneus who lost not one man to the sea — set against the ruin of Agamemnon. The archer-king has come home whole to his Magnesian towns; the bow that took Troy hangs quiet on his wall.

“Safely, they say, came the Myrmidons the wild spearsmen, whom the famous son of high-souled Achilles led; and safely Philoctetes, the glorious son of Poias.” — Odyssey 3.188-190