A Stylistic Remark on the Disjunctive Clause in Sophocles’ Trachiniae 100–101

The opening strophe of the parodos in Sophocles’ Trachiniae takes the form of a prayer to the sun. Many of its traditional hymnic features have already been noted, but one of them seems to have escaped the attention so far. In some Greek prayers - and in prayers from other Indo-European traditions as well - the appeal for the deity to come or to listen is accompanied by a list of the possible places the god might be in, phrased in the following terms: “whether you are in A or in B or in C…”. In the specific case of the disjunctive clause in the Trachiniae (100-101), it is my contention that Sophocles, by syntactic and structural means, remodels this traditional prayer motif in order to achieve his literary purpose of exalting Heracles by asking of his whereabouts in a language reminiscent of a prayer addressed most properly to a deity.