Sophocles Trachiniae 514

498-530. mvp-comment-373-1 The power of Aphrodite here, as in Ant. 781 foll., is regarded more with awe than with delight. It has been now exemplified in Iole's conquest of Heracles, so cruel to Deianira, and destined to be so calamitous to all concerned (infr. l.872). The maidens in their sympathy with Deianira recall the time when the same power had driven heroes to do battle for her, and when she was carried triumphantly from her mother's side. There is a close correspondence, as elsewhere, between this lyric strain and passages in the preceding senarii. Cp. esp. ll. 4-40, 142-150, 441-3,465-7. The ode consists of a strophe, antistrophe, and epode, in which logaoedic rhythms are varied with anapaestic and iambic metres. The anapaests (cp. O. T. 469, 470, 479, 480) indicate the coming on of the combatants; the interrupted rhythms of the epode help to express the struggle between them, while the happy issue is marked by the trochaics and glyconics at the close.

513. mvp-comment-385-1 παῖς Διός] The name is not required after this full description of the hero who is always in our thoughts. ἀολλεῖς] 'With collected might.' The Scholiast drily says, καταχρηστικῶς εἶπεν ἐπὶ δύο τὸ ἀολλεῖς. But the word is graphically descriptive of the confused contest as it appeared to an awe-stricken spectator. The meeting of the hero and the monster was as if two armies clashed. There is the same straining of language as in τετραόρου, supra. Cp. Milton, Par. Lost, Bk. 2. ll. 636 foll., where Satan is compared to a fleet at sea: ib. 714, 18, 'As when two black Clouds, | With Heaven's Artillery fraught, come rattling on | Over the Caspian, then stand front to front| Hovering a space, till winds the signal blow | To join their dark encounter in mid air.'