around, Odysseus seems most resourceful and most sufficient for anything. 14. He has represented Odysseus as arriving not alone, but with Diomed (Homeric this, too). All in all, as I said, through all the drama, he displays the greatest intelligence and plausibility in action, extraordinary and marvellous force in the speeches, dialogue at once sapient and natural and oratorical, and lyrics that not only please, but also strongly move to virtue. 15. Sophocles seems to be between the two, having neither the austerity and singleness of Æschylus nor the precision and sharpness and oratorical cast of Euripides, but a grave and magnificent poetic embracing all that is most tragic and most eloquent, uniting the greatest charm with sublimity and gravity. For his action he has used the best and most convincing plan, representing Odysseus as arriving with Neoptolemus, since it was fated that Troy should be taken by Neoptolemus and by Philoctetes using the bow of Hercules. [He has] Odysseus concealed, but Neoptolemus sending to Philoctetes and advising him what to do. He has made the chorus not, as Æschylus and Euripides, Lemnians, but shipmates of Odysseus and Neoptolemus. 16. The characters are marvellously grave and free. That of Odysseus is much gentler and more single than Euripides has made it; that of Neoptolemus, surpassingly single and high-bred, first when he wishes to get the better of Philoctetes not by craft and deceit, but by force and in the open, then when at the instance of Odysseus he has deceived him and got possession of the weapons. When Philoctetes becomes aware and urges a cheated man’s reproaches, Neoptolemus is so moved that he is about to give them back; and even when Odysseus intervenes, still at last he gives them, and as he gives them tries by argument to make Philoctetes go to Troy of his own free will. 17. When Philoctetes will in no wise yield nor be persuaded, but begs Neoptolemus to keep his promise of taking him back to Greece, he undertakes that and is ready to do it, till the intervention of Hercules wins the consent of Philoctetes to embark for Troy. The lyrics have not so much of the sententious and hortatory as those of Euripides, but a marvellous charm and magnificence. Not at random Aristophanes said of him: “The mouth of Sophocles is anointed with honey, as if he had licked the box.”