But pity one unhappy, left alone,
Thus helpless, friendless, worn with weary ills:
Speak, if it be ye come to me as friends.
Neop. Know this then first, O stranger, that we come
Of Hellas all; for this thou seek'st to know.
Phil. O dear-loved sound! Ah me! what joy it is
After long years to hear a voice like thine!
What led thee hither, what need brought thee here?
Whither thy voyage, what blest wind bore thee on?
Tell all, that I may know thee who thou art.
Neop. By birth I come from sea-girt Skyros' isle,
And I sail homeward, I, Achilles' son,
Named Neoptolemos. Now know'st thou all."—(P.)
And does Neoptolemus know the wretched man before him? asks Philoctetes. The young chief, of course, professes entire ignorance; and Philoctetes proceeds to tell his miserable history, which we have told before; and he invokes curses on the Atreidæ and on Ulysses, who planned his wrongs.
Then Neoptolemus tells his story, as arranged between himself and Ulysses previously. He, too, has reason to curse the brother-kings and the false Ulysses. But his very first words remind Philoctetes, and remind the audience, of the long years which have elapsed since he was here deserted by his comrades,
"When the Fates ruled it that Achilles died."
What—breaks in the exile—is Achilles dead? He is indeed, and Ulysses and the Atreidæ have rejected his son's rightful claim to the hero's armour. Nothing which he hears of Ulysses, in the way of baseness or falsehood, can surprise Philoctetes. Nor had he ever much confidence in the justice of the sons of Atreus.
