is the apparent dismay of the stranger at being told that Philoctetes stands before him; and great the indignation of Philoctetes to hear that he is to be taken now to Troy, as he had been before left in Lemnos, at the pleasure of his detested enemy:—
"Wretch that I am! this villain, most accursed,
Hath he then sworn to lure me back to Greece?
As soon shall he persuade me, when no more,
Like his false father, to return to earth."[1]
The agent of Ulysses is far too discreet to understand the sneer at his master's birth. He makes answer sedately,—
"Of this I nothing know, but to my ship
Depart. The gods aright direct you both."—(D.)
The object of this particular scene, which seems, in point of fact, rather to throw difficulties in the way of Neoptolemus and rouse the obstinacy of Philoctetes, is by no means easy to understand. It serves to complicate the action, and that is all. It may be that the poet wishes to show, in the character of Ulysses, that insolence of conscious power which does not care so much to accomplish its object easily, as to enjoy the discomfiture of a weaker opponent. If this was the intention, and if, as seems possible, Ulysses is all the while supposed to be within ear-shot (as he certainly is at a later stage of the action), then there would be produced upon the audience, as is not uncommon in
- ↑ Sisyphus, who (and not Laertes) was said to have been the real father of Ulysses.
