τοὺς ἐν τέλει, the Atreidae: cp. Ant. 67 n. πᾶσα and σύμπας have here an adverbial force,—‘wholly’: cp. Ai. 275“κεῖνός τε λύπῃ πᾶς ἐλήλαται κακῇ.” ἔστι … τῶν ἡγουμένων: is under their influence: cp. O. T. 917“ἔστι τοῦ λέγοντος”, n. (But in Ant. 738“οὐ τοῦ κρατοῦντος ἡ πόλις νομίζεται”; ‘is deemed his property.’） στρατός, ‘army’ (with reference to the Greek army at Troy): not=“δῆμος”,—a sense which occurs in Aesch. and elsewhere ( Soph. Ant. 8 n.), but which is nowhere requisite in Soph. , and which would be weak here, just after “πόλις.” οἱ δ᾽ ἀκοσμοῦντες βροτῶν (the gen. as in 304), the unruly; those who violate the rights of others, as Odysseus has done: cp. Ant. 730 and 660. διδασκάλων λόγοισι. This play was brought out in the spring of 409 B.C. The Revolution of the Four Hundred, in the summer of 411 B.C., was emphatically a case in which “οἱ ἡγούμενοι”—Peisander and his fellow oligarchs—had corrupted or intimidated a “πόλις”. The Army at Samos had illustrated the same process in the case of a “στρατός”,—the oligarchic officers, in correspondence with Alcibiades, having been the first agents of mischief. ( Thuc. 8. 47 and 75: Grote VIII. pp. 9 and 63.) Thus, to the ears of an Athenian audience, the poet's verses might well suggest a lightly-hinted apology for those citizens who, against their will, had been compromised by the conspirators.—Cp. Soph. O. C. 1537 n.
This text is part of:
Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part IV: The Philoctetes. Sir Richard C. Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1932.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
