καὶ παραμειβόμεσθ᾽ κ.τ.λ. In approaching or passing a shrine, it was usual to salute (προσκυνεῖν), and to invoke the deity audibly. But in passing the grove of the Eumenides the people of Colonus avoid looking towards it. No sound, no articulate word, escapes them. Their lips only move in sign of the prayer which the mind conceives. Cp. on 489. τὸ τᾶς ἐφάμου στόμα φροντίδος ἱέντες = "moving the lips of (in) reverently-mute thought"; ἱέναι (instead of οἴγειν, λύειν, διαίρειν) στόμα has been suggested by the phrases φωνὴν (or γλῶσσαν) ἱέναι: cp. fr. 844. 3 “πολλὴν γλῶσσαν ἐκχέας μάτην”. This is better than to make στόμα purely figurative (like “"the still, small voice"”), when the sense would be, "giving a (still) voice to our reverent thought," εὐφάμου (=silent) qualifying the metaphor as when discord is called “πῦρ ἀνήφαιστον”, Eur. Or. 621.
This text is part of:
Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part II: The Oedipus Coloneus. Sir Richard C. Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1899.
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