interest and exalt their glory, one from which he recoils with abhorrence. At the time when his situation appears most utterly desperate, when he sees himself on the point of being abandoned to an extremity of distress, compared with which his past sufferings were light, while he is tracing the sad features of the dreary prospect that lies immediately before him, and owns himself overcome by its horrors, the suggestion of the Chorus, that his resolution is shaken, and their exhortation that he would comply with their wishes, rekindles all the fury of his indignation, which breaks forth in a strain of vehemence, such as had never before escaped him[1]: a passage only inferior in sublimity to the similar one in the Prometheus (1045), inasmuch as Prometheus is perfectly calm, Philoctetes transported by passion.
The resentment of Philoctetes is so just and natural, and his character so noble and amiable, he is so open and unsuspecting after all his experience of human treachery, so warm and kindly in the midst of all his sternness and impatience, that it would seem as if Sophocles had intended that he should be the object of our unqualified sympathy. Yet it is not so: the poet himself preserves an ironical composure, and while he excites our esteem and pity for the suffering hero, guards us against sharing the detestation Philoctetes feels for the authors of his calamity. The character of Ulysses is contrasted indeed most forcibly with that of his frank, generous, impetuous enemy; but the contrast is not one between light and darkness, good and evil, between all that we love and admire on the one hand, and what we most hate and loath on the other. The character of Ulysses, though not amiable, is far from being odious or despicable. He is one of those persons whom we cannot help viewing with respect, even when we disapprove of their principles and conduct. He is a sober, experienced, politic statesman, who keeps the public good steadily in view, and devotes himself entirely to the pursuit of it. Throughout the whole of his proceedings, with regard to Philoctetes, he maintains this dignity, and expresses his consciousness of it. He is always ready to avow and justify the grounds on which he acts. From the beginning he has been impelled by no base or selfish motive;
- ↑ 1197. οὐδέποτ᾽, οὐδέποτ᾽, ἴσθι τόδ᾽ ἔμπεδον, κ. τ. λ.
