UL. But I for my part protest against this, as the Gods witness for me, in behalf of both the Atridæ and the army in common. PH. My son, whose voice?—I surely heard not Ulysses? UL. Be sure thou didst, and at all events thou seest him at hand, who will convey thee hence by force to the Trojan plains, whether the son of Achilles will it, or will it not. g PH. But by no means with impunity, if this arrow be sent straight. NE. Ah! ah! by no means. Do not, by the Gods, let go thy dart. PH. Let go, by the Gods, my hand, my dearest son. NE. I cannot let it go. Pн. Alas, why hast thou debarred me from slaying with mine arrows a foeman and detested wretch? NE. This were honourable neither for me nor thee. PH. Well, but be assured of thus much at least, that the chieftains of the host, the Grecian host, are vaunt-> ers of falsehood, very cowards for the battle, but bold enough in words. Fenelon, in his Telemachus, (as Franklin remarks,) has made a variation from this account, for an obvious reason, and indeed the same which has made him elsewhere suppress some particulars of Ulysses' conduct, and give a new colouring to others; the wish to make that chief worthy of Minerva's protection. He supposes that Ulysses made signs to Pyrrhus to restore the weapons, and that Philoctetes, in his first impulse of revenge and unwillingness to owe any thing to so detested an enemy, ungratefully prepared to turn his gift to his destruction. This however is, from the character of the parties, most unnatural. NÉ. Be it so. Thou art master of thy weapons, and thou hast no cause for resentment or complaint against me. PH. I allow it; thou hast, my son, displayed the nature whence thou didst spring: not from Sisyphus as father, but from Achilles, who both among the living had the noblest character, and now of the dead. NĒ. I was gratified to hear thee panegyrizing both my father and myself, but what I wish to have of thee, listen. The misfortunes that are sent by the Gods it is necessary for men to endure, but as many as are involved in voluntary evils, as thou in fact art, on these it is not just for any one to bestow either pardon or pity. But thou art become savage, and both refusest to take a partner in thy councils, and if any one speaking out of good will advise thee, thou detestest him, accounting him an enemy and that a bitter one. Yet still will I speak, and I invoke Jove the Lord of oaths; h Ulysses himself salutes Achilles as such in his interview with him in Hades: : "But sure the eye of Time beholds no name So blest as thine in all the rolls of fame; It is curious to observe, however, how different an effect, these two compliments have on the young heir and his deceased father, which latter, in his answer, perfectly agrees with the old proverb, "A living dog is better than a dead lion." i See Diodotus' oration in the third book of Thucydides; and Aristotle on voluntary and involuntary actions. know thou this also, and grave it on thy mind within. For thou art distempered with this pain by divine ordinance, having drawn near unto the guardian of Chryse, that hidden serpent that there protecting watches o'er the uncovered fane: and know that thou wilt never meet with a release from this thy grievous malady, whilst yonder sun shall in this quarter rise, and in that in turn set again, until thou thyself come willingly to the Trojan plains, and happening on the 'sons of Esculapius that are with us, thus mayest be alleviated in this thy disease: and shew thyself the destroyer of Pergamus with these weapons and in union with me. But how I know that this must be so, I will tell thee. For we have a man, a prisoner from Troy, Helenus, the first of seers, who says plainly, that all this is doomed to take place: and yet more in addition to this, that Troy must of necessity be utterly taken in the present summer; or he voluntarily surrenders himself to us to slay, if in saying this he shall From the mildness of the climate in Greece, many of the public buildings were left uncovered, and it is not yet fully agreed among the learned that the Parthenon was not hypæthral. Serpents were placed constantly by the ancients to guard treasures, as was most probably that which had a public maintenance in the building behind the Parthenon, which was the public treasury. Heuce perhaps Aristophanes' idea of the aiding Plutus by Esculapius. 1 Toup proposes to read Arxλπãy, medicorum, which Brunck rejects, without sufficient regard to what is afterwards said by Hercules, v. 1432. Quintus Calaber states that Philoctetes was healed by Podalirius, Machaon having fallen, which Propertius contradicts, L. II. E. i. v. 59. "Tarda Philoctetæ sanavit crura Machaon." have falsified. Since then thou knowest this, yield to us willingly. For noble is the acquisition, that alone having been judged the bravest of Greeks, thou in the first place fall under healing hands, and then having taken Troy that fertile mother of groans, thou gain the most transcendant renown. PH. O hateful existence, why then detainest thou me any longer possessed of sight above, and hast not suffered me to descend to Pluto's home? Ah me! what shall I do? How shall I disobey the advice of this man, who being my well-wisher has admonished me! But must I then yield? Then how shall I come forth into light, wretched I, having so acted? By whom accosted? How, O ye morbs that witness every thing that befals me, how will ye endure through this, that I join the sons of Atreus, who have destroyed me? How, with the all-accursed son of Laertes? For it is not the sorrow of what is past and gone that gnaws my heart, but I fancy I foresee what I am doomed yet to suffer from them. For those whose judgment shall become the parent of vice, it schools in all other wickedness. And I for my part am astonished at thee in this; for thou oughtest neither thyself ever again to return to Troy, and keep me too from it, to men at least that have insulted thee, spoiling thee of thy father's prize. Here again, as at v. 813, Brunck differs from several of the commentators. Gedike and Camerarius understand it of his eyes, as at v. 1270, of Edipus Tyrannus : ἔπαισεν ἄρθρα τῶν αὐτῶν κύκλων. "And then thou must go to join them in battle, and forcest me to this? Nay now, my son, but, as thou hast sworn to me, convey me home, and do thou thyself tarrying in Scyros leave them, villains as they are, to perish by a death as vile. And thus wilt thou reap double gratitude from me, and from thy father double, nor by abetting the wicked, wilt thou appear by nature to resemble the wicked. NE. Thou speakest reasonably indeed: yet still I would have thee, putting faith in the Gods and my words, to sail from this land with me thy friend. PH. What, to the Trojan plains and Atreus' most hated son, with this wretched foot? NE. To those however that will cure thee and thy corrupted foot of its pain, and deliver thee from thy malady. PH. O thou that urgest fearful advice, what canst thou mean? NE. The Phonours which I see accomplishing for me and thec. "Musgrave, who admits two lines here which Brunck (see his note) rejects as spurious, is obliged to attribute them to an oversight of Sophocles, a thoughtlesness with which, as Brunck observes, it is unreasonable to charge the most perfect of the ancient tragedians in this his most finished play. • "Auvòv aivov aivioas, dirum consilium dans: aivaïv utique nonnunquam valet suadere, hortari. Eschyl. Choeph. v. 533. aiva di κρύπτειν τάσδε συνθήκας. Idem. Supp. 187. νῦν προμηθείαν λαβεῖν Αἰνῶ, et in eadem fabula v. 1003. ὑμᾶς δ ̓ ἐπαινῶ μὴ καταισχύνειν ἐμὲ. Adde Hesiod. Op. et Di. v. 202." Musgrave. › Brunck's assertion on this passage respecting the quantity of the |