disclosure comes very late, when there had been such ample time during the voyage for Ulysses to explain his whole design, it may be very fairly answered, that the wily Greek was aware that there was much in it which was sure to disgust the young chiefs ingenuous nature, as it presently does; and that he was anxious not to enter into these awkward details until the last moment, when it would be almost too late for the other to draw back. The plan is this: Ulysses himself is to keep out of sight entirely,—for him to show his face on the island would be quite enough to determine the sufferer never to set foot on board the same vessel as his enemy, and probably to make them both a mark for his terrible arrows. Neoptolemus is to approach him, with a very plausible tale; how the Greeks, after bringing him to Troy, had refused to give him the arms of his father Achilles, awarding them instead to Ulysses, upon whose name he receives full permission to shower every term of scorn and reproach. Ulysses will take it rather as a compliment, under the circumstances, that he should do so. He is to add that, stung by this insult, he had left the fleet, and is now on his voyage homewards, and to offer Philoctetes a safe passage to his own country.
The younger chief at first repudiates utterly any such falsehood and treachery:—
"The thing which even in word I loathe to hear,
Son of Laertes,—that I scorn to do.
My nature was not made for crooked guile;
Nor mine, nor, as men say, his that begot me.
