Dio Chrysostom in one of his most valuable essays[358] sets up a comparison between the plays on Philoctetes composed by the three tragedians. The work of Sophocles is the latest, and two peculiarities help us to see how far his originality went. Firstly, as a companion to Odysseus he introduces, not Diomedes as Euripides had done, but a figure new to the Trojan war, an ingenuous lad whose sympathy brings out what gentleness remains in the sufferer’s heart. Secondly, the chorus consists of Greek sailors, not of Lemnian natives as in the two other playwrights. Sophocles will have no Lemnian visitors because for him it is a cardinal fact that Philoctetes all these years has been alone save for a chance ship. Thus we gain for a moment a glance into the actual thoughts of Sophocles: he has made up his mind that his Philoctetes must be quite solitary. So essential is this that he falsifies known facts. Lemnos, he says in the second line of his play, is “untrodden, uninhabited by men,” whereas, both in the times supposed and in the poet’s own day, it was a populous place. This, then, gives an invaluable indication of the extent to which Sophocles felt himself free to re-model his subject-matter. On the play itself it throws light. The question is to be studied not from the point of view of the Greek army, but from that of their potential helper, soured as he is by a more extreme suffering than Æschylus and Euripides had imagined. The picture thus conceived is painted with splendid power. Romantic desolation makes itself felt in the opening words of Odysseus, and this sense of the frowning grandeur of nature to which Philoctetes in his despair appeals[359] is everywhere associated with the pathos of lonely suffering. “While the mountain nymph, babbling Echo, appearing afar, makes answer to his bitter cries.”[360] All that he says, from his first exclamation of joy at hearing again the Greek language to the noble speech in which he bids farewell to the bitter home which use has made something like a friend, is instinct with this mingling of romance and pathos. Deserted by all men he has yet found companions whom in his misery he addresses; his hands, his poisoned foot, his eyes, his bow, and the familiar landscape, vocal with the “bass roar of the sea upon the headland”.[361] Closer even than these is his eternal unseen companion, Pain, whom he found at his side on first awakening after the departure of the Greek host: “When my scrutiny had traversed all the land, no inhabitant could I find therein save Sorrow; and that, my son, could be met at every turn”.[362]