ἔξω, as the context shows, means ‘out of Euboea’: for ἆρον, cp. Ai.545“αἶρ᾽ αὐτόν, αἶρε δεῦρο.—μάλιστα μέν”: cp. Ant.327 n. His thought is: ‘Take me at once to the wilds of Mount Oeta, and leave me to perish alone; or, if you shrink from that, at least take me out of the island.’ The reasons for preferring Wakefield's με θὲς to the MS. μέθες turn on these points. (1) The act. “μεθιέναι”, when said of persons, usu.=‘allow to escape’ ( O. C.906“ἄτρωτον οὐ μεθῆκ᾽ ἄν”: Ai.372“μεθῆκα τοὺς ἀλάστορας”): or ‘leave’ to some course; as Ant.653“μέθες” | “τὴν παῖδ᾽ ἐν Ἅιδου τήνδε νυμφεύειν τινί”. But this use of the verb has no place here. The sense is not, ‘allow me to escape’ to some solitude. (2) As said of things, “μεθιέναι” can mean, ‘to let go,’ ‘release from one's grasp’; El.448“ταῦτα μὲν μέθες”: ib. 1205 “μέθες τόδ᾽ ἄγγος”. Hermann, who retains μέθες, renders it by ‘depone.’ But that is too gentle a word: “μέθες” here would differ from “κατάθες” as ‘drop’ from ‘lay down.’ Cp. 1254 “ἐς πυράν με θῇς”. ὅπου … μή τις ὄψεται: cp. O. T.1410“ἔξω μέ που” | “καλύψατ̓, ἢ φονεύσατ̓, ἢ θαλάσσιον” | “ἐκρίψατ̓, ἔνθα μήποτ᾽ εἰσόψεσθ᾽ ἔτι” (n.).
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.