ταῦτ᾽ οὖν, for this reason, then: the pron. is adverbial: cp. Aesch Pers.159“ταῦτα δὴ λιποῦσ᾽ ἱκάνω χρυσεοστόλμους δόμους”: Vesp. 1358 “ταῦτ᾽ οὖν περί μου δέδοικε μὴ διαφθαρῶ”. This seems better than to govern “ταῦτ̓” by “φοβοῦμαι. —πόσις” was in Attic mainly a poetical word; but Arist. uses it, as Arist. Pol.7. 16. 18“ὅταν ᾖ καὶ προσαγορευθῇ πόσις”: where, as here, it denotes the recognised or legal status. καλῆται is right here, because there is a real anxiety: καλεῖται (which would be fut., like “καλεῖ” in El.971) would imply too much certainty. The subjunctive is similarly preferable to the indic. in Ph.30（“κυρῇ”) and ib. 494 (“βεβήκῃ”). καλῆται suits “πόσις” (‘bear the name of husband’); cp. 149: but “ἀνήρ”, denoting here a clandestine relationship, requires “ᾖ” to be supplied. Cp. 561. ἀνήρ: i.e., paramour. Cp. the sarcasm of the comic poet Pherecrates (fr. incert. 5) on Alcibiades:—“οὐκ ὢν ἀνὴρ γὰρ” [i.e., “ἔτι νέος ὤν”] “Ἀλκιβιάδης, ὡς δοκεῖ”, | “ἀνὴρ ἁπασῶν τῶν γυναικῶν ἐστι νῦν”.
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.