Sophocles, ‘Electra’ 1205–10

Extract

The attribution of lines to different speakers in Greek tragedy is a matter on which MSS have notoriously little authority. As for Electra itself, there are at least three places where the name of the heroine has been incorrectly added in some or all MSS. In my Studies in the Text of Sophocles, I, 198, I list these places and suggest that the same error has happened at a fourth place, viz. 1323. The purpose of the present note is to suggest that at El. 1205–10 the same mistake has happened yet again.

The situation is that Electra is holding the urn which she falsely believes to contain the ashes of her dead brother, Orestes. But Orestes is alive, and before her at this very moment. He is trying to persuade her to give up the urn. If the text before us had been preserved in a MS devoid of ascriptions to speakers, no one would have been so perverse as to do what all MSS and editors do in fact do, namely attribute the words οὔ φημ᾿ ἐάσειν to Orestes.