Electra. Sophocles. Lewis Campbell (Translator). London, New York and Toronto. 1906.
English (Lewis Campbell, 1906) (OCR draft) (English) (English (Lewis Campbell, 1906))
Provisional text from uncorrected OCR; expect errors.
mvp-comment-485-1 ἴστωρ 1
mvp-comment-486-1 πανσύρτῳ … αἰῶνι 2 αἰῶνι 3
mvp-comment-486-2
The literal sense then is:—‘(I know this) by a life which, through all the months, is a turbid torrent of many things dread and horrible.’
πανσύρτῳ seems rightly explained in one scholium as
πάντα σύροντι τὰ κακά:
i.e., it has an active sense, like
χαλκόπλακτος (484 n.),
ἀμφίπλακτος (
Ph. 688
),
πανάλωτος (
ἄτη,
Aesch.
Ag. 361
). The genitive,
πολλῶν δεινῶν στυγνῶν τ’, may depend upon it, as in
Soph.
Ant. 1184
f.
θεᾶς..προσήγορος=
θεὰν προσηγοροῦσα. But we might also join the genitive with
αἰῶνι, as=‘a life
of’ (made up of) these things. For the verb
σύρω in ref. to a torrent, cp.
Ar.
Eq. 527
διὰ τῶν ἀφελῶν πεδίων ἔρρει, καὶ τῆς στάσεως παρασύρων |
ἐφόρει τὰς δρῦς: Plut.
Mor.p. 5 F
πόλεμος χειμάρρου δίκην πάντα σύρων. Thus
παμμήνῳ
4
mvp-comment-486-3
This view gives
πανσύρτῳ a more forcible and more poetical sense than if it be taken as=‘swept together from every side.’ The meaning then would be, ‘a life, through all the months, of many dread horrors,
accumulated from every quarter,’—the epithet
πανσύρτῳ being transferred from the troubles to the life itself. It would still, indeed, be possible to make
πανσύρτῳ active; ‘a life which draws troubles together from all sides’; but such an active sense would be somewhat harsher, on this interpretation, than on that which supposes the image of a torrent.
823-869. mvp-comment-388-1 In this short commos, in which the broken lines are expressive of intense feeling, the several members of the Chorus, with the exception of the Coryphaeus, who, having spoken in 11. 764, 5, remains in silent sympathy with Electra, attempt to rouse her from her utter despair, partly with consolation and partly with expressions of pity. But she is, if possible, more inconsolable than before. The metres are as follows:-
850-852. mvp-comment-404-1 I know that all too well, taught by a weight of fearful horror, that month by month accumulates.' Time is conceived as drawing in his train an ever-increasing burden of pollution and grief. For δεινῶν . . ἀχέων, which is unmetrical, Hermann proposed δεινῶν στυγνῶν τ᾽ αἰῶνι,-Prof. Lushington has suggested δεινῶν* τε στυγνῶν τ' *ἄχθει, which is adopted in the text. Hermann's reading means, 'In a life which month by month accumulates horror and pollution.'