πολλοῖσιν ἀστῶν answers ποίοις ἐν ἀνθρώποισι; The conject. “πολλοῖς ἐν ἀστῶν” is admissible (O.T. 178 n.), but unnecessary. ἀγορᾷ: 372 n. ταῦτά γ̓: Iolè's name and birth: γε hints that more is in reserve. 425 If the MS. ναί be genuine here, it stands, of course, exira metrum, as in I. T. 742 “ναί”. | “πείσω σφε κ.τ.λ.” There, too, it has good MS. authority, but is omitted by Dindorf. Here, perhaps, it might indicate a moment of embarrassment on the part of the herald, who now sees that he is detected. The γε after κλύειν makes ναί unnecessary, but proves nothing against it. ταὐτὸ: other places where tragic metre proves this form are O.T. 734; fr. 771 “οὐ γάρ τι βουλῆς ταὐτὸ καὶ δρόμου τέλος”: Eur. Med.564“ἐς ταὐτὸ θείην”. But metre proves “ταὐτόν” in five places of Soph. (O.T. 325: O.C. 612, 1419: Ph.546 Ph., 1256), as in Aesch. Eum.625, Eur. Or.1280, etc. Aristophanes uses both forms (Nub. 663 “ταὐτό”, Eq.319“ταὐτόν”, etc.). 426 The antithesis is between the whole phrases, δόκησιν being the important word in the first, and ἐξακριβῶσαι in the second. “ἐξακρ. λόγον” means here, ‘to render a statement precise,’ by bringing definite evidence in support of it.
This text is part of:
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.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.