ABSTRACT
How wonderfully the poet has known how to strengthen and deepen the idea of bodily pain! He chose a wound (for the circumstances of the story may be considered by us as dependent upon his choice, inasmuch as, on account of these advantageous circumstances, he chose the whole story),—he chose, I say, a wound and not an internal malady, because he was able to make a more vivid representation of the latter than of the former, however painful it may be. The inward sympathetic fire which consumed Meleager when his mother sacrificed him by the burning of the fatal log to the wrath of his sister, would have been less adapted to the theatre than a wound. This wound, moreover, was a divine punishment; a poison worse than any to be found in nature incessantly raged within him, and it was only the vehement access of pain which had its appointed limit and then the wretched man fell into a stupefying sleep, in which he was obliged to refresh his exhausted nature in order that he might again enter upon the same path of suffering. Chateaubrun represents him as wounded only by the poisoned dart of a Trojan. From such a common occurrence what extraordinary result is to be expected? In the wars of ancient times everybody was exposed to it; how came it to pass that in the case of Philoctetes alone the consequences were so dreadful? A natural poison working for nine years without causing death is infinitely more improbable than all the fabulous wonders with which the Greek has ornamented his story.
