breaks out into very natural indignation, and demands his weapons back. "That may not be," says Neoptolemus. His victim's wrath, mingled with an unwillingness to believe in such treachery under so fair an outside seeming, is expressed in one of the finest passages in the play:—
"Thou loathed inventor of atrocious fraud,
What hast thou done—how wronged my easy faith?
Doth it not shame thee to behold me thus,
A suitor and a suppliant, wretch, to thee?
Stealing my bow, of life thou hast bereft me.
Restore, I pray thee, O my son, restore it!
By thine ancestral gods, take not my life!
Wretch that I am, he deigns not e'en reply,
But still looks backward, as resolved to spurn me.
Ye ports, ye beetling crags, ye haunts obscure
Of mountain-beasts, ye wild and broken rocks,
To you I mourn, for I have none beside!
To you, who oft have heard me, tell the wrongs,
The cruel deeds Achilles' son hath wrought!
Pledged to convey me home, he sails to Troy;
Plighting his hand in faith, he meanly steals
My bow, the sacred arms of Jove's great son,
And would display them to the Grecian host.
By force he takes me, as some vigorous chief,
Nor knows his triumph is achieved o'er one
Long helpless as the dead—a shadowy cloud—
An empty phantom. In my hour of might
He ne'er had seized me thus, since, in my ills,
He but by fraud entrapped me. I am now
Deceived to my despair. What shall I do?—
Ah! yet restore them, be again thyself.
What dost thou say?—Yet silent?—Then I perish.
