previous next

Chorus
But if he has stopped his madness, I have good hope that all may yet be well, since the trouble is of less account once it has passed.

Tecmessa
[265] And which, if the choice were given you, would you choose—to distress your friends, and have joy yourself, or to share the grief of friends who grieve?

Chorus
The twofold sorrow, lady, is certainly the greater evil.

Tecmessa
Then we are ruined now, although the plague is past.

Chorus
[270] What do you mean? I do not understand what you say.

Tecmessa
That man, while afflicted, found joy for himself in the dire fantasies that held him, though his presence distressed us who were sane. But now, since he has had pause and rest from the plague, [275] he has been utterly subjected to lowly anguish, and we similarly grieve no less than before. Surely, then, these are two sorrows, instead of one?

Chorus
Indeed, I agree, and so I fear that a blow sent by a god has hit him. How could it be otherwise, if his spirit is no lighter [280] than when he was plagued, now that he is released?

Tecmessa
This, you must know, is how matters stand.

Chorus
In what way did the plague first swoop down on him? Tell us who share your pain how it happened.

Creative Commons License
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.

load focus Notes (Sir Richard C. Jebb, 1907)
load focus Greek (Francis Storr, 1913)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide References (1 total)
  • Commentary references to this page (1):
    • Sir Richard C. Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Electra, 441
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: