ἀείρομ̓. Homeric verse admits the elision of “αι” in the verbal endings “-μαι, -σαι” (except in the infin.), “-ται, -σθαι”. There is no other example of it in Tragedy; but it does not seem impossible that Sophocles should have used the familiar epic licence in a lyric passage. If we read “ἀείρομαι οὐδ̓ ἀπώσομαι”, a cyclic dactyl is substituted for a trochee; which does not seem very likely in this metrical context. (Cp. H. H. SchmidtJ. , Compositionslehre p. cxlii., and W. Christ, Metrik p. 378.) In the lemma of the schol. we certainly find “ἀείρομαι οὐδ᾽ ἀπώσομαι”: but that proves nothing.—For the sense (“μετεωρίζομαι ἐν τῷ χορεύειν” schol.), cp. Ar. Eccl. 1179 “αἴρεσθ᾽ ἄνω, ἰαὶ εὐαί”.
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Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part V: The Trachiniae. Sir Richard C. Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1902.
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