δόλος … ἔρος: guile planned the deed,—i.e., devised the means of doing it: lust was ‘the slayer,’ as having supplied the motive. Some would transpose, reading “ἔρος ἦν ὁ φράσας, δόλος ὁ κτείνας”: i.e., lust prompted the deed, and guile executed it. But this is tamer and more prosaic. There is a higher tragic force in the old reading.—The epic form “ἔρος” is not used by Aesch. , and by Soph. only here; by Eur. , in dialogue also, as Eur. Hipp. 337“ο<*>ον, μῆτερ, ἠράσθης ἔρον”.
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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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