ἐκ … σφαγῶν τοῦδε διελθὼν, having passed out from the wounds of Nessus. ἰὸς αἵματος, a poison consisting (or contained) in blood, because the poison from the arrow had become mixed with the blood; and it was in the form of blood (572 “ἀμφίθρεπτον α<*>μα”) that the poison had been applied. For the ‘defining’ gen., cp. El.682“πρόσχημ᾽ ἀγῶνος”,=“πρόσχ. ἀγωνιστικόν”. τόνδε, Heracles. “τοῦδε—ὅδε—τόνδε”: this repetition of the pron., in different relations, has been thought strange. Yet cp. O. T.948“καὶ νῦν ὅδε” | “πρὸς τῆς τύχης ὄλωλεν, οὐδὲ τοῦδ᾽ ὕπο”: where “ὅδε” is Polybus, and “τοῦδ̓”, Oedipus. She reasons from past to present:—‘the same poison, coming from this source, will kill this man.’ The reiterated pronoun really marks the stress of the inductive argument. Others take ἐκ … τοῦδε as=‘from this arrow’: then “σφαγῶν” must go either with “διελθών”, ‘having come through (from) the wounds’; or with “αἵματος”, ‘poison contained in the blood of the wounds.’ But the point is that the poison, though it comes to Heracles from the wound of Nessus, and not (as to its former victims) directly from the arrow, is still the same. And, since ὅδε expresses this, τοῦδ̓, if it referred to the arrow, would be superfluous. δόξῃ γοῦν ἐμῇ: cp. Phaed.68B “οὐκ ἄσμενος εἶσιν αὐτόσε; οἴεσθαί γε χρή”. For “γοῦν”, cp. n. on Ant.45“τὸν γοῦν ἐμόν”.
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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.
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