ὁ Μαίας δὲ παῖς. Hermes “χθόνιος”, whom Electra had already invoked (111), acts here in his twofold quality as “πομπαῖος” and “δόλιος”. Cp. Ph. 133“Ἑρμῆς δ᾽ ὁ πέμπων δόλιος ἡγήσαιτο νῷν”. A like part is assigned to him in the Choephori, 727 “χθόνιον δ᾽ Ἑρμῆν” | .. “τοῖσδ᾽ ἐφοδεῦσαι” | “ξιφοδηλήτοισιν ἀγῶσιν”: ib. 812 “ξυλλάβοι δ᾽ ἐνδίκως” | “παῖς ὁ Μαίας ἐπιφορώτατος” (like a favouring wind) | “πρᾶξιν οὐρίαν θέλων”. Ἑρμῆς σφ᾽ ἄγει is the most probable reading. The erasure in L, and the variants in later MSS., have prompted conjectures. Thus Neue, whom Nauck and Wecklein follow, writes “ἐπί σφ̓ ἄγει”: G. Wolff suggests “ἑξῆς σφ᾽ ἄγει”: Kvíčala, “σφ᾽ ἐπεξάγει”. But it is rash to assume that “Ἑρμῆς” is a gloss: cp. [Eur. ] Rhes. 216 “ἀλλ᾽ εὖ σ᾽ ὁ Μαίας παῖς ἐκεῖσε καὶ πάλιν” | “πέμψειεν Ἑρμῆς, ὅς γε φηλητῶν ἄναξ”. If the ς of σφ̓ had been lost after “Ἑρμῆς, φ̓ἄγει” might have led to “ἐπάγει”, and this to mistaken remedies, such as “ἐπεισάγει” (cr. n.).
This text is part of:
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.
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.