ποῖ τις φροντίδος ἔλθῃ; Such phrases present thought, speech, or the mind itself, as a region in which the wanderer is bewildered; cp. 310: El. 922 “οὐκ οἶσθ᾽ ὅποι γῆς οὐδ᾽ ὅποι γνώμης φέρει”: “"thou knowest not whither or into what fancies thou art roaming"”: ib. 1174 “ποῖ λόγων … ἔλθω;” ib. 390 “ποῦ ποτ᾽ εἶ φρενῶν;” Tr. 705 “οὐκ ἔχω...ποῖ γνώμης πέσω”. ἔλθῃ, delib. subjunct., in third pers., as Dem. De Cor. § 124 “πότερόν σέ τις, Αἰσχίνη, τῆς πόλεως ἐχθρὸν ἢ ἐμὸν εἶναι φῇ;” L has ἔλθοι, which might be defended as = "whither can one possibly turn?" — a more despairing form of “ἔλθῃ”. Mr. A. Sidgwick has pointed out (Aesch. Cho. Append. p. 122) that the Attic examples of such an optat. without “ἄν” are always directly or indirectly interrogative (as Ant. 604 “τίς...κατάσχοι;”), and are akin to the interrogative or "deliberative" subjunctive, not to the conditional optat. with “ἄν”. The principle is (I think) true. But here, at least, the genuinely "deliberative" “ἔλθῃ” seems best. See Appendix.
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