I came across this excerpt from Electra in Morwood’s Greek Reader:
Ὀρέστης Ἠλέκρα
Ὀρ. > τί δῆτα δρῶμεν; μητέρ’ ἦ φονεύσομεν;
Ἠλ. > μῶν σ’ οἶκτος εἷλε, μητρὸς ὡς εἶδες δέμας;
Ὀρ. > φεῦ· πῶς γὰρ κτάνω νιν, ἣ μ’ ἔθρεψε κἄτεκεν;
Ἠλ. > ὥσπερ πατέρα σὸν ἥδε κἀμὸν ὤλεσεν.
The φεῦ confused me. I looked it up online, and found that most texts place it on a separate line of its own. Is that sort of break in the metre normal? Is it possible that something came in from the margin here?
Yes, φεῦ and other exclamations often, like here, don’t fit into the meter, and they are normally printed on a line by themselves. I don’t think there is any reason to suspect that it comes from a marginal note.
Thanks. I wonder how it was performed? I.e.
φεῦ (long, drawn-out, followed by a moment of silence)
πῶς γὰρ κτάνω νιν, ἣ μ’ ἔθρεψε κἄτεκεν; (with terrible emotion)
On YouTube is the 1957 Oedipus Rex, performed in Greek costume and masks. The masks are surprisingly powerful and conveying certain kinds of emotion – the exaggerated rictus gives an effect that the human face cannot easily match.