Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/373

Rh relies altogether on the ambition of Neoptolemus, who is destined by fate to be the conqueror of Troy, if he can obtain the aid of the weapons of Philoctetes, and Neoptolemus does, in fact, suffer himself to be prevailed upon to deceive Philoctetes by representing himself as an enemy of the Greeks who are besieging Troy, and is just on the point of carrying him off to their camp, under the pretence of taking him home; meanwhile Neoptolemus is deeply touched, in the first place, by the unsophisticated eloquence of Philoctetes, and then by the sight of his unspeakable sufferings; but it is long before the resolute temper of the young hero can be drawn aside by this from the path he has once entered on. The first time he departs from it is after Philoctetes has given him his bow to take care of, when he candidly admits the truth, that he is obliged to take him to Troy, and cannot conduct him to his home. Yet he still follows the plans of Ulysses, though much against his own inclination, and this drives Philoctetes into a state of despair, which almost transcends all his bodily sufferings, until Neoptolemus suddenly reappears in violent dispute with Ulysses, as himself, as the simple-minded, straightforward, noble young hero, who will not in any case deceive the confidence of Philoctetes; and as Philoctetes cannot and will not overcome his hatred of the Achæans, he throws aside all his ambitious hopes and wishes, and is on the point of escorting the sick hero to his native land, when Hercules, the Deus ex machina, suddenly makes his appearance, and, by announcing the decrees of fate, produces a complete revolution in the sentiments of Philoctetes and Neoptolemus. This drama, then, is exceedingly simple, for the foundation on which it is built is the relation between three characters, and it consists of two acts only, separated by the stasimon before the scene, in which the change in Neoptolemus's views is brought about. But if we consider the consistent and profound developement of the characters, it is by far the most artificial and elaborate of all the works of Sophocles. The appearance of Hercules only effects an outward peripeteia, or that sort of revolution which bears upon the occurrences in the piece; the intrinsic revolution, the real peripeteia in the drama of Sophocles, lies in the previous return of Neoptolemus to his genuine and natural disposition, and this peripeteia is, quite in accordance with the spirit of Sophocles, brought about by means of the characters and the progress of the action itself.

§ 11. In all the pieces of which we have spoken hitherto, the prevailing ideas are ethical, but necessarily based on a religions foundation, since it is always by reference to the divinity that the proper bias is


 * V. 965: . The silence of Neoptolemus in the scene beginning with, v. 974, and ending with the words , v. 1074, is just as characteristic as any speech could have been.