And in the end Odysseus gets his way. As the two friends start for home, leaving the Greeks at Troy to defeat and the oracles of Heaven to non-fulfilment, a god appears to command from the sky that self-sacrifice shall be revoked and hate forgotten. What are we to think of this intervention of Heracles? Is he not an extreme instance of the _deus ex machina_? Is not mere compulsion employed to change a settled resolve? This is the most striking and the most difficult feature of the construction: rather it seems the negation of structure. Why is it employed? Some[351] have been content to suggest Euripidean influence—of course no answer at all. Some[352] have thought that Heracles is personified conscience, rising to remind Philoctetes of his duty to Greece; a suggestion ruled out by the fact that his duty has been urged clearly by Neoptolemus. A more attractive idea[353] is that the genuine _peripeteia_ of the play consists in Neoptolemus’ change of front; in this way an inner dramatic unity is secured, while the external change induced by Heracles is a mere concession to the data of legend. This in its turn is vitiated by the fact that for the dramatist Philoctetes, and not Neoptolemus, is the central figure: this is proved by the work as a whole and by the title which the poet himself gave it. If the _deus ex machina_ is not to be condemned utterly, it follows from the basic law of Attic art that the play up to the moment of Heracles’ appearance, however complete it seemed to us a moment ago, is not complete—that some coping-stone is still needed. And if we consider the action up to that point we cannot really be content. To disregard the oracles which tradition said were fulfilled, the action, as Sophocles depicts it, is unsatisfactory. Philoctetes is to get the revenge which seems rightly his, and we approve his young companion who aids him at such cost. But by this time we feel a little dubious about the sufferer. There has been perhaps too much detail in his outcries and his account of his sufferings. Hatred which will refuse both health and fame, without any loss but that of aged intentions, has begun to seem a moral falsetto. But who can say, without misgiving, that (on pagan principles) he is wrong? One person only in Heaven and earth—Heracles. Every ordinary consideration of public and personal interest has been put before Philoctetes in vain. But there is another thought which neither the victim himself nor Odysseus nor Neoptolemus has strength enough to suggest, or even to remember. One character alone in Greek story rises above the conception of personal injury or personal benefit as a motive to action; Heracles is the great reminder, not so much that wrongs to oneself should be forgiven, as that life is too short and precious to be wasted on revenge. Heracles would return a blow with vigour, but a vendetta, in the light of his career, seems a childish folly. One does