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

Methone — Methone of the seven ships, whose bowmen bore the arrows of Heracles that felled Troy.

The Magnesian realm of Methone sent seven ships of archers to Troy under Philoctetes, bearer of Heracles' bow. Abandoned wounded on Lemnos, he was fetched in the tenth year to shoot Paris and help take the city — and, rare among the Achaeans, came safely home.

Leader at Troy: Methone.

Role in the Trojan War: Achaean. Seven ships of expert bowmen from the Magnesian coast under Philoctetes; abandoned on Lemnos with his snake-wound, he was recalled in year ten and slew Paris with the bow of Heracles, fulfilling the prophecy that took Troy.

The homecoming: One of the few who came safely home — the archer whose bow felled Paris.

Methone was the seat-town of a small Magnesian realm strung along the Thessalian seaboard beneath wooded Pelion, where the Gulf of Pagasae opens to the deep. With its sister-towns Thaumacia, Meliboea and rugged Olizon it manned seven ships for the war on Troy, and in each ship, Homer says, sailed fifty oarsmen skilled to fight amain with the bow — a contingent of archers such as no other Achaean host could match. Their captain was Philoctetes son of Poias, cunning archer, and to him alone belonged the bow and arrows of Heracles. His father Poias had been the man who, when no other durst, set light to the god's pyre upon Mount Oeta and was given the great bow for the deed; from Poias it came to Philoctetes, and with it the seven ships of Methone sailed. But the leader never reached Troy with his men. Bitten by a deadly water-snake, he lay enduring sore pain in the isle of goodly Lemnos, where the sons of the Achaians left him with his festering wound — abandoned by the very host he served. His men were not leaderless: Medon, Oileus' bastard son, marshalled them through nine long years, so that the archers of Methone kept the field though their king lay pining far away. Then, in the tenth year, the war turned upon the bow of Methone. Calchas prophesied that Troy could not be taken unless the bow and arrows of Heracles fought on the Achaean side, and Odysseus went with Diomedes to Lemnos, got possession of the weapon by craft, and persuaded its bearer to sail. Cured at last by Podaleirios — one of the two healer-sons of Asklepios who led neighbouring Trikke — Philoctetes came at last to the plain of Ilios, and there with a single deadly shaft he shot Alexandros, the Paris whose theft of Helen had loosed the whole war. So the man twice-wronged by the Achaeans became the instrument of Troy's doom; and when the great horse was built he was among the picked warriors who sat armed within its belly. In all the host only he surpassed Odysseus with the bow — a distinction Odysseus himself conceded before the Phaeacians. At the dramatic present of the returns his is a rare clean nostos. Nestor, sitting in his halls at Pylos and telling Telemachos all he has heard, names Philoctetes among the very few who came safely home — set beside the doomed homecoming of Agamemnon of Mycenae in the same breath, the safe return against the murdered one. (A darker later tale has him driven instead to Campania in Italy, where he warred on the Lucanians, founded Crimissa near Croton, and hung up the bow of Heracles in a sanctuary of wandering Apollo — but in Homer's own reckoning the archer of Methone reached his Magnesian shore.) The realm cross-links across the war's whole web. MEL (Meliboea) is its own sister-town, mustered in the same seven ships. TRI (Trikke) sent the Asklepiad Podaleirios who healed the festering wound. LOC (Locrians) is the house of Oileus, whose bastard son Medon led the contingent in the captain's absence — brother to swift Aias the Locrian. CEP (Cephallenians, Odysseus) and ARG (Argos, Diomedes) are the two who fetched him and his bow from Lemnos, the same Odysseus who had helped leave him there. TRO (Trojans) supplied his greatest quarry, Paris. And MYR (Myrmidons) marches with him in Nestor's roll of the safe-returned, both named in one line; while MYC (Mycenae) stands as the answering shadow — the king who came home to the axe where the archer came home whole.

“and safely Philoctetes, the glorious son of Poias.” — Odyssey 3.190