ἢ κἀμοῦ: for the redundant “καί”, see on O.C. 53 “ὅσ᾽ οἶδα κἀγώ.” μητρὸς … φίλος, her ‘dear one,’ ‘darling.’ The objections made to “φίλος”, on the ground that it must mean ‘friend,’ illustrate the danger of identifying a word with its conventional equivalent in another language. The conjectures are all bad (“γάνος, θάλος, τέκος, φάος”, and, worst of all, “᾿φελος”, i.e. “ὄφελος”). The schol. on 1146 has, “τὸ δὲ φίλος ἀντὶ ὄφελος”. But P. N. Papageorgius corrects “ὄφελος” to “ὦ φίλος” (Scholia in Soph. Trag. Vetera, Leipsic, 1888). And this is confirmed by the first part of the same scholium: “οὐκ ἦσθα τῆς μητρὸς ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον καὶ ἐμοῦ”: i.e., the scholiast understood, ‘for thou didst not belong to thy mother more than to me,’ and took “φίλος” as=a vocative.
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Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part VI: The Electra. Sir Richard C. Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1894.
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