Starting from the Philoctetes of Sophocles, this paper suggests a clarification of the meanings and the uses of παλαιός and πάλαι, distinguishing between a finished time and a continuous time and making clearer the distinction between remote past and near past by the divisions of time in tragedy. Careful study of the uses of πάλαι about a near past and a continuous time. The young Neoptolemus is concerned by these uses, not the old Philoctetes suffering for a long time from two evils : illness and dereliction.En prenant pour base le Philoctète de Sophocle, cette communication propose une clarification des sens et des emplois de παλαιός et de πάλαι, en établissant une distinction entre passé révolu et non révolu et en affinant la distinction...