previous next

πατρὸς ψυχὴν … ζῶσαν=“"my father's life, if it could live again,"”=simply “πατέρα ζῶντα”: not, “"his departed spirit, if it could visit this world."”

ψυχή in the trag. never means “"a departed spirit"” ( Il. 23.104 “ψυχὴ καὶ εἴδωλον”), but always the anima of the living: cp. Aesch. Ag. 1456 (of Helen) “μία τὰς πολλὰς … ι ψυχὰς ὀλέσασ᾽ ὑπὸ Τροίᾳ”. For the periphrasis here cp.

“ὦ φιλτάτου μνημεῖον ἀνθρώπων ἐμοὶ
ψυχῆς Ὀρέστου λοιπόν

”

: Ant. 559 “ἡ δ᾽ ἐμὴ ψυχὴ πάλαι ι τέθνηκεν”.


Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part II: The Oedipus Coloneus. Sir Richard C. Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1899.

Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education provided support for entering this text.

This text was converted to electronic form by professional data entry and has been proofread to a high level of accuracy.

Creative Commons License
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.

hide References (4 total)
  • Commentary references from this page (4):
    • Sophocles, Antigone, 559
    • Sophocles, Electra, 1126
    • Homer, Iliad, 23.104
    • Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 1456
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: