UL. No, at least if the lie brings safety.

NE. With what face then shall one dare to say all this?

UL. When thou doest aught for advantage, it suits not to recoil.

NE. But what advantage to me is his going to Troy?

UL. These archer-weapons alone will take Troy. NE. What, am not I then the destined destroyer, as ye declared ?

UL. Neither couldst thou be without them, nor they without thee.

NE. Then must they be our prize, if indeed it be so. UL. Truly, if thou do this, thou wilt get thyself two rewards.

NE. Of what sort? for having learnt I would not refuse the doing it.

UL. Thou wouldst be called at once wise and good.

NẸ. Be it so, I will do it, having laid aside all shame.

UL. Dost thou then remember all that I have advised thee?

NE. Be assured I do, now that I have once con

sented.

UL. Do thou then abiding here receive him; but I will be gone, lest being present I be discovered, and I will send the spy back again to the ship. And hither again, if ye seem to me to loiter at all in time, I will send out this same man, having tricked him out in appearance after the manner of a ship's master, that ignorance may befal [i. e. of his person to Philoc

tetes] from whom, my son, speaking "cunningly, gather thou of his words from time to time whate'er may profit us. But I will go to the vessel, committing all this to thee; and may attendant Mercury, patron of deceit, be our guide, and Minerva the P victorious of cities, who ever protects me.

CHORUS.

What, what, my prince, must I, in a strange land a stranger, hide, or what say to the suspicious man? tell me. 9 For contrivance surpasses other contrivance, as does judgment, in him by whomsoever the divine sceptre of Jove is swayed. And to thee, my son, this full power from olden time hath come: wherefore declare to me in what it is needful for me to do thee service.

r

NE. Now, for haply thou desirest to look on the spot in a region so remote, wherein he lies, look

" Пoxiλws, variè, versutè. Thus Livy has "variè agere, and in Sallust the mind of Catiline is called "varius." Cat. c. 5.

• Mercury had many appellations of this kind, which are humourously mentioned towards the close of the Plutus of Aristophanes.

› Minerva is said to have been worshipped in her temple on the Acropolis under this name. Her second title was derived from her being the foundress of Athens, and appears therefore in the mouth of the speaker somewhat misplaced. Her protection of Ulysses is well known: v. Ajax, L. 1. Il. X. 279.

η σοφία δ ̓ ἂν σοφίαν

παραμείψειεν ἄνης.

CED. TYR. v. 503.

* « Τὸ μοι ἔννεπε, pro διὰ τοῦτο elliptic. Vid. Hom. II. ΙΙΙ. ν. 176, VII. v. 239. XVII. v. 404." Barby.

boldly; but when the dread wayfarer shall come, do thou, ever at my beck emerging from these his haunts, endeavour to be of present service.

CHO. Thou speakest, O king, of a care by me long since cared for, to keep a watchful eye especially for thy occasion. But now tell me in what kind of dwelling he is the settled inhabitant, and what place he tenants; for this it were not inopportune for me to learn, lest he having approached from any quarter escape my notice. What spot, or what abode is his ? • What path takes he? within his dwelling, or without? NE. This habitation with double entrance of the rocky lair that thou seest, is his.

CHO. And where is the wretched man himself away from it?

NE. It is clear to me at least that in want of food he is furrowing his tread somewhere near; for report says that he exercises this mode of sustenance, laboriously, himself o'erwhelmed with toil, striking his quarry with winged arrows, nor does any healer of his woes come to him.

CHO. I truly pity him, for that he, none of mankind regarding him, nor having any comrade aspect [to behold] unhappy, ever solitary, is distempered with a fierce disease, and helplessly languishes in every want that arises to him. How, how does the hapless man

• These reiterated questions well denote the dread of the Chorus, after they have been already informed by their Lord himself (v. 31.) that Philoctetes is not within.

''AXút, ádnμovéï Schol. which latter word is used in the New Testament to express the vehemence of our Saviour's agony.

ever support it? O toiling hands of mortals! O luckless races of men, to whom destiny is untoward! He perchance being inferior to none of his forefathers, destitute of all in life, lies alone apart from others, with the dappled or the shaggy beasts, pitiable both in pain and hunger, possessed of incurable afflictions: " while mournful Echo with her babbling tongue rising from afar hears and answers to his bitter shrieks.

NE. None of these things is to me surprizing, for they are heaven-sent, if at least I have aught of judgment. And those sufferings have descended on him from Chryse of the savage heart, and all that he now labours under unsupported by anxious friends cannot but be by the providence of the Gods, that he should not aim the Deitics' invincible weapons against Troy ere the time should elapse, at which 'tis said by these she must be overcome.

CHO. A noise arose familiar to a man, as pained.

" The mockery of Echo is finely imagined here, and may almost bear a comparison with the sublime passage from an eastern tale which Lord Byron has quoted in his notes to the Bride of Abydos, n. 42.

There are two accounts of the manner in which Philoctetes became thus diseased. The one which Sophocles appears to have followed states that he landed on an island near Lemnos, called Chryse, whereon he had been directed to sacrifice to Minerva in behalf of the Greeks, and was bitten by a serpent that guarded the spot. The other attributes his misfortune to the vengeance of Heaven for his having disclosed, by stamping with his foot, the place where Hercules' remains had been interred, which was soon followed by the fall of one of his patron's arrows on the guilty member.

NE. Was it somewhere hereabouts, or there? The voice of some one strikes, aye, strikes upon me distinctly, one crawling on his path with much ado, nor does the deep utterance of a worn-out spirit from afar escape me, for over-loudly it resounds.

CHO. Take, my son-

NE. Tell me what.

thought anew.

CHO. The man is not out of his abode, but in the place, not trolling the music of the reed-pipe, as a rural shepherd, but either, somewhere stumbling, for violent pain he shrieks his farechoing cry, or descrying our vessel's inhospitable station; for dreadful is his outcry.

PHILOCTETES.

O strangers, who can ye be that with mariner's oar have put into this land, neither good of harbourage nor y inhabited? From what possible country or race should I be right in saying you were? For the array of your dress is that of Greece, my best-beloved: but I would hear your voice: and do not recoiling with horror be astounded at me thus brutalized, but in pity to an unhappy man, lonely, thus forlorn, friendless, and in pain, speak to me, if indeed ye come as friends. But answer in your turn, for it is not just that in this

y It must not be supposed, from these and similar expressions throughout the play, that Lemnos was entirely uninhabited, since the descendants of the Argonauts dwelt there, and Homer (Od. VIII. 283.) calls the island ἐϋκτίμενον πτολίεθρον, but only those parts of it which Philoctetes inhabited, whose range must necessarily, from his lameness, have been very confined.