Sailing from Tharsus to Tyre, the ship in its course passed by Metaline, where Marina dwelt; the governor of which place, Lysimachus, observing this royal vessel from the shore, and desirous of knowing who was on board, went in a barge to the side of the ship, to satisfy his curiosity.  Hellicanus received him very courteously, and told him that the ship came from Tyre, and that they were conducting thither Pericles, their prince; “A man, sir,” said Hellicanus, “who has not spoken to any one these three months, nor taken any sustenance, but just to prolong his grief; it would be tedious to repeat the whole ground of his distemper, but the main springs from the loss of a beloved daughter and a wife.”  Lysimachus begged to see this afflicted prince, and when he beheld Pericles, he saw he had been once a goodly person, and he said to him, “Sir king, all hail, the gods preserve you, hail, royal sir!” But in vain Lysimachus spoke to him; Pericles made no answer, nor did he appear to perceive any stranger approached.  And then Lysimachus bethought him of the peerless maid Marina, that haply with her sweet tongue she might win some answer from the silent prince:  and with the consent of Hellicanus he sent for Marina, and when she entered the ship in which her own father sat motionless with grief, they welcomed her on board as if they had known she was their princess; and they cried, “She is a gallant lady.”  Lysimachus was well pleased to hear their commendations, and he said, “She is such an one that were I well assured she came of noble birth, I would wish no better choice, and think me rarely blest in a wife.”  And then he addressed her in courtly terms, as if the lowly-seeming maid had been the high-born lady he wished to find her, calling her Fair and beautiful Marina, telling her a great prince on board that ship had fallen into a sad and mournful silence; and, as if Marina had the power of conferring health and felicity, he begged she would undertake to cure the royal stranger of his melancholy.  “Sir,” said Marina, “I will use my utmost skill in his recovery, provided none but I and my maid be suffered to come near him.”

She, who at Metaline had so carefully concealed her birth, ashamed to tell that one of royal ancestry was now a slave, first began to speak to Pericles of the wayward changes in her own fate, telling him from what a high estate herself had fallen.  As if she had known it was her royal father she stood before, all the words she spoke were of her own sorrows; but her reason for so doing was, that she knew nothing more wins the attention of the unfortunate than the recital of some sad calamity to match their own.  The sound of her sweet voice aroused the drooping prince; he lifted up his eyes, which had been so long fixed and motionless; and Marina, who was the perfect image of her mother, presented to his amazed sight the features of his dead queen.  The long-silent prince was once more heard to speak.  “My dearest wife,” said the awakened Pericles, “was