When Athena transforms him, nothing more is needed to keep Philoctetes in ignorance of who he is. So Homer made the story, and after him Euripides. Therefore, if some unfriendly critic should accuse Æschylus of taking no care as to how Odysseus shall be convincing without being recognized by Philoctetes, (6) his defense, I think, would be as follows. While the time was not, perhaps, so great that the character could not be sustained (i.e., through ten years), yet the disease of Philoctetes, his misery, and his having passed the interim in a desert are sufficient to make plausible his not recognizing Odysseus. For many have experienced the same lapse, some from weakness, some from misfortune. No, the chorus had no need, as in Euripides, to excuse themselves to him. 7. Both [poets] represented the chorus as composed of Lemnians. Euripides has made them at once apologize for their former neglect because for so many years they had not come to Philoctetes or helped him at all. Æschylus simply brought on the chorus—a method far more tragic as well as simpler, whereas that of Euripides is more oratorical and precise. If [dramatists] could escape all absurdities in their tragedies, perhaps there would be reason for not neglecting this; but actually they make their heralds accomplish in one day several days’ journey. 8. Now the case was not quite that none of the Lemnians came to him or gave him any care. Probably he would not have passed ten years without finding any help at all. Probably he did find it, though rarely and of no great account; and no one chose to take him in and tend him because of the loathsomeness of his disease. Euripides, forsooth, out of his own head introduces Actor, one of the Lemnians, as an acquaintance who went out to Philoctetes and often helped him.