[49] μεμνώμεθα This subjunctive occurs also in Hom. Od. 14.168 “πῖνε καὶ ἄλλα παρὲξ μεμνώμεθα,” Plat. Stat. 285c “φυλάττωμεν ... καὶ ... μεμνώμεθα,” Plat. Phileb. 31a “μεμνώμεθα δὴ καὶ ταῦτα περὶ ἀμφοῖν.” Eustathius (1303. 46, 1332. 18) cites the word here as μεμνῴμεθα (optative). We find, indeed, “μεμνῷο” Xen. Anab. 1.7.5 (v. l. μεμνῇο), “μεμνεῷτο” Hom. Il. 23.361, “μεμνῷτο” Xen. Cyrop. 1.6.3, but these are rare exceptions. On the other hand, “μεμνῄμην” Hom. Il. 24.745, “μεμνῇτο” Aristoph. Pl. 991, Plat. Rep. 518a. If Soph. had meant the optative he would have written μεμνῄμεθα: cp. Soph. Phil. 119 “ἂν ... κεκλῇο.” See Curtius Greek Verb 2.226 (Eng. tr. p. 423). The personal appeal, too, here requires the subjunct., not optat.: cp. Soph. OC 174 “μὴ δῆτ᾽ ἀδικηθῶ,” Soph. Trach. 802 “μηδ᾽ αὐτοῦ θάνω.”
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.