9. Neither does it seem to me that any one can justly find fault with making [Philoctetes] narrate to the chorus, as if they did not know it, his abandonment by the Achæans and everything else that happened to him; for an unfortunate is wont to recount his mishaps often, even to those who know them in detail, and wearies those who have no need to hear his woes by telling them over and over again. Moreover the deceit of Odysseus toward Philoctetes, and the arguments by which he induces him, are not only more in character, such as befit a hero and unlike the pleas of Eurybatus or Patæcion, but also, I think, more convincing. 10. For what need was there of manifold art and device with a sick man, and a bowman at that, whose strength became useless so soon as one but stood near? And the announcing of the mishaps of the Achæans, that Agamemnon was dead, that Odysseus was to blame most disgracefully, that the army had perished utterly—all this is not only useful for putting Philoctetes in a good humor and disposing him to accept the speech of Odysseus, but is not in any wise improbable, considering the length of the campaign and what had happened not long before through the wrath of Achilles, when Hector almost went to burn the beached ships. 11. The intelligence of Euripides, that unfailing care which neither leaves anything unconvincing or unprovided nor simply uses actions but [uses them] with all force in the expression, is as it were the converse of the habit of Æschylus, being most oratorical, most rhetorical, most available for the use of debaters. At the very beginning, for instance, Odysseus has been represented in the prologue as revolving in his mind political enthymemes and at first doubtful of himself, lest while he seems to the crowd to be wise and distinguished in intelligence, he may be the opposite. 12. It is open to him to live unfretted and inactive; but his wish is to be always in deeds and dangers. The cause of this, he says, is his emulation of men goodly and noble. For these who are bent on good report and universal fame willingly undertake the greatest and most difficult toils. “Nothing is born so proud as man.” Then sapiently and precisely he discloses the plot of the drama and why he has come to Lemnos. 13. He says he has been transformed by Athena so that when he meets Philoctetes he shall not be recognized. (Euripides imitates Homer in this; for Homer had Odysseus transformed by Athena when he met not only others, but even Eumæus and Penelope.) He says an embassy is about to come from the Trojans to Philoctetes, to ask that he offer them himself and his arms in return for the kingship of Troy. [Thus Euripides] makes the action more various and invents occasions for the arguments by which, when he turns them the other way