ἐξηύχουν ἄν, I could have vowed, σχολῇ ἥξειν ποτὲ δεῦρο, that it would be long before I ever came hither. Cp. Eur. Helen 1619 “οὐκ ἄν ποτ᾽ ηὔχουν οὔτε σ᾽ οὔθ᾽ ἡμᾶς λαθεῖν ι Μενέλαον, ὦναξ, ὡς ἐλάνθανεν πάρων”: ‘I should never have expected that he would escape us’; where (as the order of words shows) “ἄν” goes with “ηὔχουν”,—the suppressed protasis being, as here, “εἰ ἠρώτα τις”, ‘if any one had asked me.’ So Lys. or. 12 § 22 “ἐγὼ δ᾽ ἐβουλόμην ἂν αὐτοὺς ἀληθῆ λέγειν”, ‘I could wish’ (the ref. there being to present time), sc. “εἰ δυνατὸν ἦν”. Cp. Soph. Ph. 869 n. The needless emendations of this verse have aimed at disjoining “ἄν” from “ἐξηύχουν” and attaching it to the infin., or else at removing it altogether. But, though the “φύλαξ” had actually said (in the ‘aside’ at 329) that he did not mean to come back, he was not therefore debarred from using this turn of phrase; ‘I could have vowed that I would not come back.’ σχολῇ (cp. 231), here iron., ‘not in a hurry’ (O. T. 434 n.); Shaksp. Tit. Andron. 1. 2. 301 “‘I'll trust by leisure him that mocks me once.’”
This text is part of:
Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part III: The Antigone. Sir Richard C. Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1900.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.