ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν, ‘in our power’; cp. O. C. 66“ἢ ᾿πὶ τῷ πλήθει λόγος”; Ph. 1003“μὴ ᾿πὶ τῷδ᾽ ἔστω τάδε”. Xen. An. 3. 1. 35“ὡς μήποτ᾽ ἐπὶ τοῖς βαρβάροις γενώμεθα, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον...ἐκεῖνοι ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν”. The sense of “ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν” is the reason for giving the words to Electra, and not, as L does (cr. n.), to Orestes.—Not, ‘towards us.’ With a dat. denoting persons, “ἐπί” would mean rather ‘against,’ as in Hom. Od. 10. 214“οὐδ᾽ οἵ γ᾽ ὡρμήθησαν ἐπ᾽ ἀνδράσιν”. It is different when the dat. denotes a place, though even then such a sense for “ἐπί” is rare; Hom. Il. 5. 327“νηυσὶν ἐπὶ γλαφυρῇσιν ἐλαυνέμεν” (‘towards’). Some have thought that the words of Orestes in this v. should be metrically equivalent to those of Clyt. in 1411, “οἴκτιρε τὴν τεκοῦσαν”. Nauck, for example, proposes “τὸν ἄνδρ᾽ ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν τοῦτον”; This seems, however, a groundless assumption.
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Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part VI: The Electra. Sir Richard C. Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1894.
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