Sophocles (Collins)/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
PHILOCTETES.
All that was mortal of Hercules, as we have seen, perished in the flames on Mount Œta; but his famous bow and the arrows with the hydra's blood were not burnt with the hero. Philoctetes, his armour-bearer, had been among the few who had aided Hyllus in carrying his father up the steep sides of the mountain; he had gathered the wood for the funeral-pile; and it was said that he had with his own hands applied the torch and kindled the flames. In gratitude for these last offices, Hercules had given him the bow and the poisoned arrows; which proved a possession almost as full of trouble to their new owner as they had to the hero himself.
Philoctetes had sailed for Troy with the rest of the armament; but on the voyage it happened that the Greek fleet touched at Chrysa, and there, while rashly treading on consecrated ground, he had been bitten in the foot by a venomous serpent. The wound gangrened and festered—and so noisome was the stench from it, and so terrible were the sufferer's cries of agony, that, by the advice of Ulysses, he was landed while asleep on the desert isle of Lemnos, and there left alone in his misery.
It is at Lemnos, accordingly, that the scene of this tragedy is laid. Instead of the usual palace or ancestral mansion in the background—with the city on one side and the open country on the other—the spectators have nothing before them but rocks and waves; and these for nine weary years had been the sole companions of Philoctetes.[1] From time to time some stray ship had come, and the sailors had so far pitied him as to give him some scanty supplies of food and clothing; but none would listen to his prayers that they would carry him home with them to Greece. And so he had lingered on, tortured by his rankling wound,—satisfying his hunger with the birds that he brought down with his bow, and with difficulty dragging his limbs to the spring to quench his thirst.
Meanwhile Troy was still being besieged, though many of the great heroes of the war had met their deaths around its walls. Hector had fallen by the sword of Achilles. Achilles himself had been struck with an arrow from the bow of Paris, guided by his enemy the Sun-god. Ajax, as we have seen, had slain himself in his despair. But the surviving chieftains maintained the war with the same obstinacy as before; and recently a new aspect had been given to the struggle. They had captured Helenus, son of Priam, endowed like Cassandra with the gift of prophecy; and from him they learned that an oracle had disclosed that Troy should never be taken but by the son of Achilles and with the bow of Hercules.
Accordingly, when the play opens, a Greek vessel has just reached Lemnos, bearing a deputation from the camp, to fetch Philoctetes and his fated arrows. At last in their own need the Greeks have bethought them of the comrade whom they had so cruelly deserted. And it is Ulysses, of all men,—Ulysses, by whose advice the unhappy man had been left behind,—who now comes to induce him—by persuasion if possible, by force if need be—to give the allies the aid of his weapons. Such an ambassador on such an errand would have seemed of all men the least likely to succeed. Sophocles probably did but take this part of the tale as he found it; and loyalty to the epic tradition, that no enterprise which required diplomacy, eloquence, or subtle device, could possibly be undertaken by the Greeks without the aid of "the man of many wiles," led the story-tellers, and Sophocles after them, to make him the envoy on this as on similar occasions. With him, however, is a comrade of a very different character. This is the young Neoptolemus (better known to us, perhaps, by his surname of Pyrrhus—"the Red"), son of the dead Achilles. The poet's reasons for thus associating him with Ulysses (for here the dramatist takes original ground of his own) are sufficiently clear. The young chief was wholly guiltless of any complicity in the injury done to the hero by the older Greeks in deserting him; for he was then a boy in Phthiotis, far from the scene of action. Neoptolemus, too, has a special interest in procuring the charmed weapons, for it is to him the Fates point as the hero who is to win the town of Troy.
The two voyagers have landed, and they commence the dialogue of the piece. Ulysses knows the localities well. The cave with double entrance, with the fountain close at hand—it was here that, so many years ago, they had left their wretched comrade asleep. He bids Neoptolemus advance along the rocks and explore the neighbourhood, and look cautiously into the cavern, to ascertain whether he whom they seek lies within. He keeps himself in the background, for to be discovered by Philoctetes would be ruin to his plan. The younger chief easily finds the place—the bed of leaves, the wooden drinking-vessel, the few rags for dressing the wounded foot—such is the poor wealth of the occupant; but he is not within. Ulysses, then, after setting one of the crew to watch, discloses to his young companion—very conveniently for the audience—the plan which he wishes him to pursue in order to get Philoctetes and his arrows on board their vessel. If the too prosaic and curious reader should remark that this 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.
I am content to take the man by force,
So not by treachery; for his single strength
Were scarce a match, I trow, for all our crew.
Still, having shared thine errand, I were loath
To seem a recreant now; yet would I rather
Fail through fair deeds than win a foul success."
The reader wants little more to put him in possession of the character of Neoptolemus. Gallant and impetuous, open and chivalrous, he is the true son of the ideal knight of Greek romance, the great Achilles, who had declared, in Homer's words—which we can see, from the brief passing allusion, were in the mind of the dramatist, as he knew they surely would be in those of his audience—
"Who dares think one thing and another tell,
My heart detests him as the gates of hell."[2]
Not so Ulysses. The crafty man of the world sneers at the youthful enthusiast for honesty and straightforwardness. Such things are very well—in their time and place. He himself had tried them:—
"Son of a gallant sire, I was young once,
And used my tongue not much, my hand full promptly;
But now, schooled by experience, I can see
That in all mortal dealings 'tis the tongue
And not the hand that wins the mastery."
After a brief parley, the plausible counsels of Ulysses prevail over the better feelings of his comrade. The argument which the latter cannot resist is, that without these arrows of Hercules he will lose the glory of taking Troy. So Ulysses leaves the stage, commending his young friend—with a calculating piety which unhappily is not peculiar to pagan dramatists—to the care of the goddess of Wisdom, his own special protectress, and to Hermes, the god of guile. The piety of Ulysses (for he was pious after his own fashion) breathes the spirit of the famous prayer in the 'Critic,'—
"Grant us to accomplish all our ends,
And sanctify whatever means we use
To gain them."
The Chorus, who now take up the action, are composed in this play of the crew of Neoptolemus's vessel, and appear, from their reminiscences, to be some of the veteran "Myrmidons" who had served at Troy under his father Achilles. They proceed, by the young chief's permission, to explore the island; keeping a careful watch, however, lest its solitary inhabitant should suddenly surprise them, and launch against such intruders his poisoned shafts. Neoptolemus shows them the opening in the rock which leads to the cavern, but tells them that the sufferer is not now within. They soon hear the cry of one in pain; as they listen, the sound comes nearer, and, dragging his steps painfully along the rocky pathway, Philoctetes makes his appearance. He hails the strangers, and inquires their country and their errand:—
"Your outward guise and dress of Hellas speak,
To me most dear, and yet I fain would hear
Your speech; and draw not back from me in dread,
As fearing this my wild and savage look,
But pity one unhappy, left alone,
Thus helpless, friendless, worn with weary ills:
Speak, if it be ye come to me as friends.
Neop. Know this then first, O stranger, that we come
Of Hellas all; for this thou seek'st to know.
Phil. O dear-loved sound! Ah me! what joy it is
After long years to hear a voice like thine!
What led thee hither, what need brought thee here?
Whither thy voyage, what blest wind bore thee on?
Tell all, that I may know thee who thou art.
Neop. By birth I come from sea-girt Skyros' isle,
And I sail homeward, I, Achilles' son,
Named Neoptolemos. Now know'st thou all."—(P.)
And does Neoptolemus know the wretched man before him? asks Philoctetes. The young chief, of course, professes entire ignorance; and Philoctetes proceeds to tell his miserable history, which we have told before; and he invokes curses on the Atreidæ and on Ulysses, who planned his wrongs.
Then Neoptolemus tells his story, as arranged between himself and Ulysses previously. He, too, has reason to curse the brother-kings and the false Ulysses. But his very first words remind Philoctetes, and remind the audience, of the long years which have elapsed since he was here deserted by his comrades,
"When the Fates ruled it that Achilles died."
What—breaks in the exile—is Achilles dead? He is indeed, and Ulysses and the Atreidæ have rejected his son's rightful claim to the hero's armour. Nothing which he hears of Ulysses, in the way of baseness or falsehood, can surprise Philoctetes. Nor had he ever much confidence in the justice of the sons of Atreus. But there was one chief among the Greeks who would surely, he thought, have prevented this wrong. Ajax was honest surely, if none else—
"He was no more, O stranger. Had he lived,
I had not thus been cheated of my right."
True—the questioner had again forgotten the changes of ten years. Is it then possible (he grasps eagerly at the hope) that his bitter enemy Ulysses—"the bastard of Sisyphus," as he calls him—and Diomed, who had been his abettor in the treachery, are they too dead? for at least they were unfit to live. Neoptolemus replies—
"In sooth, not they: be sure they flourish yet,
Holding high place amid the Argive host."
And Nestor—the noble old warrior, his personal friend, whose prudent counsel was wont to curb the rashness of the younger captains—he is probably dead also? No; the old man lives, but lives to mourn the loss of Antilochus, the son of his old age, whom death, in its bitter irony, has taken before the father. And Patroclus, the trusty friend of Achilles?—
"He, too, has fallen. Lo! in one brief word
I tell thee all: War never, with good will,
Doth choose the evil man, or leave the good.
Phil. I hold it true; and for that very cause
Will ask thee yet as to one worthless wretch,
Of subtle tongue and crafty, how he fares?
He must mean Ulysses, says Neoptolemus,—following his chief's instructions to abuse him, apparently with considerable zest. But it is Thersites, the mob-orator of Homer, the man who boldly speaks evil of dignities, who is in Philoctetes' mind. Every Athenian in the audience would remember the description of him in the Iliad. He is alive, of course? Neoptolemus understands that he is, though he has never seen him. Philoctetes replies bitterly—
"Well may he live, for nothing bad will die,
So well the gods do fence it round about;
And still they joy to turn from Hades back
The cunning and the crafty, while they send
The just and good below."—(P.)
Neoptolemus purposes ostensibly to return to his ship, to wait for the rising of the breeze which is to bear him home to Scyros. For he will never see the Greek camp and the sons of Atreus more. Never again will he be found amongst a company
"Where still the evil lord it o'er the good,
And honour starves, and cowardice bears sway."
He bids farewell to Philoctetes, and prays that heaven may soon send some cure for his pains. Then follows a scene which, in the hands of a good actor, must have been one of the most effective in the play. Seeing himself about to be thus a second time deserted, Philoctetes breaks into an agonised entreaty that the young chief and his sailors will take him on board their vessel. Put him where they will, "in hold, or stem, or stern," he cares not, so he may see once more his father and his native land. It will be a noble deed, and
"Noble souls
Still find the base is hurtful, and the good
Is full of glory."
The young chief acts his assumed part well. It is easy to imagine, from the frequent breaks in the appeal made to him by Philoctetes, the by-play of hesitation—now turning to depart, and now apparently half relenting—with which he listens to the sufferer's entreaties. The Chorus are moved to pity. They pray their young captain to assent. They, for their own part, are quite willing to bear the inconvenience of such a passenger, though his grievous affliction will, as he warns them, make him no very pleasant companion on ship-board. So he yields to this double solicitation, and Philoctetes turns to bid a pathetic farewell to the scene of his long and miserable exile, to which he nevertheless bears some sort of affection, when two men are seen approaching. They are two of the ship-guard—one of them disguised as a merchant, who professes to have just landed on the island, and, hearing of Neoptolemus's presence there, has come to bring him important news from the coast of Troy, whence he himself has lately sailed. It is, in fact, an additional stratagem of Ulysses, brought into play apparently for the purpose of hurrying Philoctetes on board the vessel. The pretended merchant's tale is that the Greeks, in their wrath at the defection of Neoptolemus, have despatched an expedition to overtake him and bring him back by force. Another party has also sailed under Ulysses and Diomed, in quest of a certain Philoctetes, without whom the Fates have declared Troy cannot be taken, and whom Ulysses has pledged himself—and offered his own head as a forfeit if he fails—to bring into the Grecian camp either by force or by persuasion. Great is the apparent dismay of the stranger at being told that Philoctetes stands before him; and great the indignation of Philoctetes to hear that he is to be taken now to Troy, as he had been before left in Lemnos, at the pleasure of his detested enemy:—
"Wretch that I am! this villain, most accursed,
Hath he then sworn to lure me back to Greece?
As soon shall he persuade me, when no more,
Like his false father, to return to earth."[3]
The agent of Ulysses is far too discreet to understand the sneer at his master's birth. He makes answer sedately,—
"Of this I nothing know, but to my ship
Depart. The gods aright direct you both."—(D.)
The object of this particular scene, which seems, in point of fact, rather to throw difficulties in the way of Neoptolemus and rouse the obstinacy of Philoctetes, is by no means easy to understand. It serves to complicate the action, and that is all. It may be that the poet wishes to show, in the character of Ulysses, that insolence of conscious power which does not care so much to accomplish its object easily, as to enjoy the discomfiture of a weaker opponent. If this was the intention, and if, as seems possible, Ulysses is all the while supposed to be within ear-shot (as he certainly is at a later stage of the action), then there would be produced upon the audience, as is not uncommon in the Attic tragedies, a half-comic effect by the protest of Philoctetes, delivered, as it were, in the very presence of the man between whom and himself he is determined to put the wide barrier of the sea, and into whose very arms he is thus about to rush in his eager haste to escape him.
The wind is against them as yet, says Neoptolemus—they must wait a while. Nay, replies the other,—
"All winds are fair to him who flies from woe."
But before he embarks, he has some poor treasures which he must needs get together and take with him. A herb there is which he has found on the island, which in some sort soothes the anguish of his wounded foot. And—he must take good heed that he leaves behind no one of the fateful arrows. Then, for the first time, Neoptolemus seems to remark the bow which he carries. Is this the wondrous bow of Hercules? May he be allowed to handle it for a moment,—nay, to print a reverent kiss upon the sacred relic of so renowned a hero? And while the sufferer, leaning on his new-found friend, withdraws into his cavern to seek what he requires, the Chorus, as they tread the stage in measured time to the accompanying music, chant an ode expressive of their kindly sympathy.
And now the pair reappear upon the scene, to begin their way to the ship, when suddenly Philoctetes stops, and utters a suppressed cry. One of those paroxysms of agony which his wound causes him from time to time has come on at this moment. Dreading the effect which it may have upon Neoptolemus and his crew, as reminding them of the annoyance which the close companionsliip of such a wretch is sure to prove to them throughout their voyage, he strives for a while to conceal his anguish. "'Tis but a trifle" — "he is better again." Eut at last the trial is too much for him. Maddened by the pain, be begs of his friend to draw his sword and smite ofi" the miserable limb, — nay, if it cost him his life, the deed will be a charity. But no, — these paroxysms are terrible while they last, but after a while, having run their course, they will sub- side. He cannot bear even the touch of the hand v/hich K'eoptolemus extends to support him:—
"Nay, not so:
But take my bow and arrows, which but now
Thou askedst for, and keep them till the force
Of the sharp pain be spent; yea, guard them well,
For slumber takes me when this evil ends,
Nor can it cease before; but thou must leave me
To sleep in peace; and should they come meanwhile
Of whom we have heard, by all the gods I charge thee
Nor with thy will, nor yet against it, give
These things to them, by any art entrapped,
Lest thou shouldst deal destruction on thyself
And me who am thy suppliant.
Neop. Take good heart,
If forethought can avail. To none but thee
And me shall they be given. Hand them to me,
And good luck come with them!
Phil. (giving the bow and arrows.) Lo there, my son!
Receive thou them; but first adore the power
Whose name is Jealousy, that they may prove
To thee less full of trouble than they were
To me, and him who owned them ere I owned.
Neop. So be it, O ye gods, to both of us;
And may we have a fair and prosperous voyage
Where God thinks right, and these our ships are bound!"
Alas! the prayer, Philoctetes fears, will be in vain. The spasms have come on afresh; and his great fear is lest his new-found friend shall desert him after all:—
"And wilt thou stay?
Neop. Deem that beyond all doubt.
Phil. I do not care to bind thee by an oath.
Neop. I may not go from hence apart from thee.
Phil. Give me thy hand as pledge.
Neop. I give it thee
As pledge of our remaining."—(P.)
At length—after a scene of physical suffering protracted to a length which proves that the taste of an Athenian audience for sensation was as keen as that of any modern play-goer, though the sensation is of a different type—nature is exhausted, and the sufferer sinks into a death-like sleep. As he lies there, while Neoptolemus retires into the background, the Chorus take up their chant again. It is in part an invocation to sleep, mingled with hints to Neoptolemus (whose instructions from Ulysses they seem partly to understand, partly only to suspect) that now, while he lies thus helpless, there is an opportunity to carry him off bodily, or to make safe prize of the coveted weapons of Hercules:—
"O sleep that know'st not pain!
O sleep that know'st not care!
Would thou mightst come with blessed balmy air,
And blessing long remain,
And from his eyes ward off the noontide blaze,
Now full upon him poured.
Come as our healer, lord!
And thou, my son, look well to all thy ways;
What next demands our thought?
What now must needs be wrought?
Thou seest him;—and I ask
Why we delay our task;
Occasion that still holds to counsel right
With quickest speed appears as conqueror in the fight."
They continue their chant in this strain of innuendo, while Philoctetes lies stretched in the sleep of physical exhaustion.
The conflict between the better nature of the young chief and the uncongenial task he has undertaken, has begun long before the sufferer awakes. It is shown but faintly in the dialogue; but an actor who threw himself into the part would no doubt express it very intelligibly by his movements and gestures, while he watched the sleeper and listened to the strains of the Chorus. Loyalty to what he holds to be the public interest of the Greek cause, the overwhelming importance of the capture of Troy, the renown which awaits him personally as its conqueror,—all these have to be weighed in the scale against an act of unquestionable treachery,—yet after all, it might be said, a treachery rather to the advantage of the victim. His embarrassment is completed by the words of Philoctetes, when at length he awakes from his troubled sleep, the agony subdued for a while, and addresses his deliverers, as he thinks them, with simple gratitude and confidence:—
"Phil. (waking) O light that follows sleep! O help, my thoughts
Had never dared to hope for from these strangers!
For never had I dreamt, boy, that thou
With such true pity wouldst endure to bear
All these my sorrows, and remain and help.
The Atreidæ ne'er had heart to bear with them
As well as thou hast borne. Brave generals they!
But thou, my son, who art of noble heart,
And sprung from noble-hearted ones, hast made
But light of all."—(P.)
Philoctetes begs that they may sail at once. And Neoptolemus assists him to rise and move in the direction of the ship. But suddenly the young man stops; he can endure to keep up this deception no longer.
"Neop. O heavens! what now remains for me to do?
Phil. What ails thee, O my son? what words are these?
Neop. I know not how to speak my sore distress.
Phil. Distress from what? Speak not such words, my son.
Neop. And yet in that calamity I stand
Phil. It cannot be my wound's foul noisomeness
Hath made thee loath to take me in thy ship?
Neop. All things are noisome when a man deserts
His own true self, and does what is not meet.
Phil. But thou, at least, nor doest aught nor say'st,
Unworthy of thy father's soul, when thou
Dost help a man right honest.
Neop. I shall seem
Basest of men. Long since this tortured me."—(P.)
At length he tells Philoctetes the truth,—he is commissioned to carry him to Troy. Then Philoctetes 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.
Thou double portal of the rock, again
I enter thee, of arms, of life, deprived.
But I must pine forsaken in the cave;
Nor wingèd bird, nor mountain-ranging beast,
Shall these good darts bring down. I yield in death
To those a banquet, who supplied my own.
******
I will not curse thee, ere I learn if yet
Thou wilt relent—if not, all evil blast thee!"—(D.)
Neoptolemus makes a motion to restore the bow, when Ulysses (who, we must suppose, has been a listener to at least the latter portion of the dialogue) rushes in between them:—
"Ulys. What wouldst thou do,
O vilest of mankind? Wilt thou not hence,
The sacred arms resigning to my hand?
Phil. Ha! who is this? Ulysses do I hear?
Ulys. Ay, I who stand before thee am Ulysses.
Phil. O, I am sold, undone! This is the wretch
Who snared and hath despoiled me of mine arms.
Ulys. 'Tis I, in sooth—none else. I own the deed.
Phil. Restore, give back the arms to me, my son!
Ulys. This, did he wish, he would not dare to grant.
But thou must hence with us, or those around
By force must drag thee."—(D.)
In vain does the sufferer appeal to Heaven against such wrong; it is Heaven, says Ulysses, whose will he and Neoptolemus are obeying in forcing him to Troy. Then he will throw himself headlong from the rock, and end his misery at once, rather than be thus disgraced. But he is seized and overpowered by order of Ulysses, who listens with a calm composure to the bitter invectives which his prisoner hurls at him. When Philoctetes at last pauses in his denunciation, Ulysses replies in measured words which are a perfect index to his character, as drawn by the poet:—
"I might say much in answer to his words,
If there were time. Now this one word I speak:
Where men like this are wanted, such am I;
But when the time for good and just men calls,
Thou couldst not find a godlier man than me.
In every case it is my bent to win,
Except with thee. To thee of mine own will
I yield the victory. Ho, leave him there!
Lay no hand on him,—let him here remain.
With these thy arms, we have no need of thee:
Teucros is with us, skilled in this thine art;
And I, too, boast that I, not less than thou,
This bow can handle, with my hand shoot straight;
What need we thee? In Lemnos walk at will,
And let us go. And they perchance will give
As prize to me what rightly thou mightst claim."—(P.)
The character of Ulysses is drawn in stronger and less favourable colours by the dramatist than as he appears in either of the Homeric poems. There is a cold cruelty in his treatment of Philoctetes, from first to last, which does not characterise him in either the Iliad or Odyssey. It is true that he is serving no selfish end; it is in the cause of Greece that he undertakes this commission, as it was in the same interest (we must suppose) that he advised the desertion of Philoctetes at Lemnos. We must not wonder that, like many diplomatists, he is little scrupulous as to means. But he seems almost to revel in the odiousness of his self-imposed duty.
He withdraws again from the scene, taking with him the reluctant and repentant Neoptolemus, who is half inclined to listen to the appeal of their victim. The crew, by Neoptolemus's permission, remain, and strive to console the sufferer, who laments his miserable fate in strains to which the Chorus make such reply as they can:—
"Ah me! upon the shore,
Where the wild waters roar,
He sits and laughs at me,
And tosseth in his hand
What cheered my misery,
What ne'er till now another might command.
O bow most dear to me,
Torn from these hands of mine,
If thou hast sense to see,
Thou lookest piteously
At this poor mate of thine,
The friend of Heracles,
Who never more shall wield thee as of old;
And thou, full ill at ease,
Art bent by hands of one for mischief bold,
All shameful deeds beholding,
Deeds of fierce wrath and hate,
And thousand evils from base thoughts unfolding
Which none till now had ever dared to perpetrate."
But they are interrupted by the sudden return of Neoptolemus, in high dispute with Ulysses, who is trying to hold him back. The young chief has made up his mind. He will do the right, come what may. The glory of taking Troy will be no compensation for the loss of self-respect. He will at once give back the weapons of Hercules. In vain Ulysses threatens him with the vengeance of the allied Greeks; in vain—or worse than in vain—he lays his hand significantly upon his sword. The young chief replies to the threat by a fierce grasp of the hilt of his own weapon; and Ulysses, too wary to involve himself in a dangerous and discreditable brawl, contents himself with an appeal to the Greeks in council. Neoptolemus will not spare him a natural sarcasm on his discretion:—
"Thou hast shown prudence; be as prudent ever,
And thou mayest chance to keep thyself from harm."
But Ulysses, as he turns off in disgust, either does not hear, or affects not to hear, the taunt. Then the other calls Philoctetes out of his cave, and restores to him the weapons. Ulysses comes forward again, and loudly protests against such weakness; but Philoctetes, once more master of his bow, vengefully prepares to launch an arrow at his enemy, when Neoptolemus stays his hand. Once more the latter tries to urge upon him to go with them to Troy of his own free will, and so reap the glories which await him there; but arguments on this point have no avail, and he prepares to redeem his pledge to carry the exile home.
The perplexity is solved by an expedient allowable in the Greek drama, though it would be held inartistic in our own. Hercules himself intervenes. The hero-god appears suddenly in mid-air (and we have reason to believe the scenic appliances were complete enough for such appearance to be highly effective), and stands before the mortal captains radiant in the glories of Olympus. Such a visitor is, after all, not a bolder appeal to the supernatural than the ghost in Hamlet; and perhaps the half-imaginative belief of the educated portion of an Athenian audience in the continual existence, in some higher state, of their national heroes, might correspond pretty nearly to the belief in ghosts which would have been found amongst the same class of Englishmen in Shakspeare's day. It would be sufficient—indeed, it is practically sufficient still—for the sentiment of the tragedy. The tableau on the stage was no doubt highly effective when Hercules, with a commanding gesture, arrests the steps of Philoctetes as he is moving off:—
"Not yet, O son of Pæas, ere once more
Our accents reach thine ear.
Know 'tis the voice of Hercules thou hearest,
His form thine eyes behold.
To watch thy fortunes I awhile have left
My own celestial seat,
That Jove's almighty mandate I may breathe,
And in his name forbid thy purposed course."
He tells his friend of the glory which yet awaits him,—how he shall be healed of his wound, shall slay Paris with one of the fateful arrows, and be judged the bravest of the Greek host. And when Troy has fallen by his hands and those of Neoptolemus, let them not forget, in the hour of their triumph, to reverence the gods; for that alone can bring lasting happiness to mortals.
Philoctetes cannot resist the voice of the great hero whom he still loves and honours. He accompanies Neoptolemus to the ship; but before they go, he chants his last words of farewell to the scene of his long banishment:—
"Come, then, and let us bid farewell
To this lone island where I dwell:
Farewell, O home that still didst keep
Due vigil o'er me in my sleep;
Ye nymphs by stream or wood that roam;
Thou mighty voice of ocean's foam,
Where oftentimes my head was wet
With drivings of the South wind's fret;
And oft the mount that Hermes owns
Sent forth its answer to my groans,
The wailing loud as echo given
To me by tempest-storms sore driven;
And ye, O fountains clear and cool,
Thou Lykian well, the wolves' own pool—
We leave you, yea, we leave at last,
Though small our hope in long years past.
Farewell, O plain of Lemnos' isle,
Around whose coasts the bright waves smile,
Send me with prosperous voyage and fair
Where the great Destinies may bear,
Counsels of friends, and God supreme in Heaven
Who all this lot of ours hath well and wisely given."
This tragedy has been highly praised both by French and by English critics, and it has undoubtedly the merit of being simple and natural, though the interest is of a weaker quality than in most of the plays of Sophocles. The character of Neoptolemus is well drawn; and the struggles between interest and duty—or rather between what seem to him two conflicting duties—are interesting, if not highly tragic. But the play has one prominent feature which mars the whole effect to our English taste, No man can be a hero, to our notions, whose sufferings are wholly physical; and far less one who demands our sympathies for such sufferings by physical expressions of pain. Upon a Greek audience, no doubt, the effect was different. The enjoyment of life was very keen among the Athenians: they also felt bodily pain more keenly, with their sensitive organisations, than we do, and they certainly expressed their feelings with far less reticence. For them, the diseased foot, and the cries of agony to which it gives occasion, had possibly a real tragic interest. To us it is not so. All the ingenuity and ability of critics fails to make such a subject anything but distasteful to an ordinary English mind. We almost forgive the Greeks for leaving Philoctetes behind, if he was always shrieking and bemoaning himself after the fashion assigned to him in the play. It is one of the hardest things connected with continued bodily suffering, when it finds vent in audible groans and complaints, that instead of rousing the sympathies of those in attendance on the sufferer, it is too apt to dull and weary them. Cries and complaints may be unavoidable, but to our notions they are always undignified and unmanly. Our cold and stern temper demands that pain be borne in silence—ignored altogether, so far as possible. Its audible expressions belong with us to comedy, not to tragedy. Even in the Iliad, we are not touched with the dying groans of the heroes. Our ideal hero is mute in suffering—he must have more of the nature of the Roman wolf-cub—
"He dies in silence, biting hard,
Amid the dying hounds."
But in this respect, the Philoctetes of Sophocles is not only at variance with modern tastes and sympathies; it stands also in strong contrast with an earlier Greek tragedy of a severer type, in which the hero is also represented in the extremity of physical suffering—the Prometheus of Æschylus. The Titan is brought upon the stage to be fastened to his rock, there to waste away for long years in sufferings compared with which those of Philoctetes are but ordinary: the adamantine rivets are driven through his chest, but he utters no cry of physical anguish. Nay, so long as his tormentors are present, he is mute altogether. When he utters his grand appeal to Earth, and Sky, and Sea,—it is against the injustice of his doom, rather than the bitterness of the torture. He launches defiance against his torturer, not complaints. Therefore, even across the gulf of centuries, we feel almost as an Athenian audience felt the grandeur of the conception. It is true enough, as has been said, that Sophocles is far more human in his tragic pathos than the elder poet; but there are phases of humanity, intensely natural, which are yet no fit subjects for dramatic representation; and it is surely not a decline but a development of critical taste, which reckons physical pain as one of them.
- ↑ We may compare a similar passage in Tennyson's Enoch Arden, p. 32,—
"The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns
And winding glade high up like ways to heaven,
The glories of the broad belt of the world,
All these he saw; but what he fain had seen
He could not see, the kindly human face,
Nor ever heard a kindly voice, but heard
The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl,
The league-long roller thundering on the reef,
As down the shore he ranged, or all day long
Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge,
A shipwrecked sailor, waiting for a sail." - ↑ Iliad, ix. 312—Pope's translation, which even Mr Gladstone pronounces "not quite unworthy" of the original.
- ↑ Sisyphus, who (and not Laertes) was said to have been the real father of Ulysses.