φήνασθαι: the aor. midd. of the simple “φαίνω” occurs nowhere else; nor is there any other place where any part of the simple midd. “φαίνομαι” is trans., ‘to show.’ (“ἀπεφηνάμην” is frequent.) The poet prob. meant φήνασθαι here to be a little more than “φῆναι”,— i.e., ‘to show for his own glory,’ ‘to display.’ The object to φήνασθαι is “τὰ τόξα” only. It would be awkward to understand (with Nauck) “ἐμὲ καὶ τὰ τόξα”: and the display of the captive is implied in the next vv. Seyffert, placing only a comma after θέλει, and reading κοὐχ ὡς for κοὐκ οἶδ̓ in 946, understands:—‘He wishes to boast (“φήνασθαι”, gloriose de se praedicare) among the Argives that (ὡς 945) he is bringing me by force, a strong man whom he has taken, and not as it were a dead man whom he is slaying’ (“κοὐχ ὡς ἐναίρων νεκρόν”). But the awkwardness of this conjectural κοὐχ ὡς is intolerable, when ὡς in 945 is to mean ‘that.’ Further, it is clearly essential to the force of the passage that there should be a full stop (or colon) at θέλει. Verse 945 is an indignant amplification of 941, “ἐς Τροίαν μ᾽ ἄγει”. ‘He is taking me by force, I say, as if he had captured (ὡς ἑλὼν) a strong man,’ etc.
This text is part of:
Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part IV: The Philoctetes. Sir Richard C. Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1932.
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