I

On the eve of the trial against Orestes, the chorus of Eumenides remind the audience about the risks of allowing impunity, and conclude that fear is a useful principle for any community.Footnote ¹ The Erinyes advance this notorious thesis by means of a rhetorical question (Eum. 522–5), which is thus transmitted:

The core of the argument here seems intelligible. Since in the previous lines (517–21) the Chorus praised the deterrent action of fear, we now expect that the Erinyes will ask: ‘what city or mortal would still revere Justice’, sc. if they did not feel fear? This principle is later reiterated by Athena: τίς γὰρ δεδοικὼς μηδὲν ἔνδικος βροτῶν; (699). However, the text of lines 522–3, which should supply the concept of fear, appears highly problematic.

1. 1. ἀνατρέφων offers an unsatisfying meaning. The word occurs only once in fifth-century poetry (Ar. Ran. 944), in a long medical metaphor, and most of its occurrences in pre-Hellenistic prose are also medical; the verb must mean ‘“feed up” the patient in the stage of convalescence’,Footnote ² or ‘feed again’, according to one value of the preposition ἀνά.Footnote ³ This meaning seems hardly suitable.Footnote ⁴

2. 2. ἀνατρέφων is also suspect for metrical reasons: to produce responsion with line 514, 523 must be a lekythion.Footnote ⁵ To this end, the second syllable of ἀνατρέφων requires a syllabic lengthening in semi-initial position before mute and liquid, something extremely rare—though perhaps not impossibleFootnote ⁶—in Aeschylean odes.Footnote ⁷

3. 3. Most interpreters find ἐν φάει unclear, or even plainly meaninglessFootnote ⁸—although, as we shall see, without cause.

4. 4. As the text stands, lines 522–3 fail to supply the necessary condition for the realization of εὐσέβεια implied by the main clause.

At present, then, the paradosis is unanimously considered corrupt, deemed beyond sure restoration by most editors; they have nevertheless intervened to insert the notion of fear (problem 4) while simultaneously addressing problems 1–3. Some supply the idea of fear by correcting ἐν φάει: so Auratus conjectured ἐν δέει (‘nourishing the heart on fear’),Footnote ⁹ and Schütz proposed ἐν φόβῳ.Footnote ¹⁰ The majority, however, have preferred to emend ἀνατρέφων.

(a) It is possible to emend the second part of the participle: the concept of fear can be supplied by emending –τρέφων to –τρέμωνFootnote ¹¹ or –τρέων, ‘shiver’.Footnote ¹² Both verbs are close to the paradosis; however, they require a further intervention, to find a solution for the prefix ἀνα–. Herein lies the greatest liability of this line of emendation. The least invasive hypothesis is Mazon's καρδίαν ἄνα τρέων, ‘shivering in the heart’, which involves no further change to the paradosis.Footnote ¹³ However, while the anastrophe is plausible, the resulting expression ἀνὰ καρδίαν does not look idiomatic. Other hypotheses look equally unconvincing, and less economic than Mazon's. Murray's ἀνὴρ τρέμων, for instance, requires further emendations: to avoid a repetition with ἢ πόλις βροτός θ᾽ (524), we need to change βροτός to βροτῶν,Footnote ¹⁴ thus creating the unwelcome phrase πόλις βροτῶν (a useless redundancy and an uncommon iunctura), and reshaping the opposition between individual and community as follows: τίς … | ἀνὴρ τρέμων | ἢ πόλις βροτῶν.Footnote ¹⁵

(b) We might also supply fear as an object of τρέφων, by emending ἀνα–. Paley's δέος τρέφων—with μηδέν (522) referring to δέος, ‘not nourishing any fear’—supplies the concept of fear, restores normal scansion, and creates a phrase acceptable in Greek verse (for example Soph. Trach. 28 ἀεί τιν᾽ ἐκ φόβου φόβον τρέφω).Footnote ¹⁶ Ferrari's φόβον τρέφων is along the same lines, with μηδέν᾽ as a masculine accusative qualifying φόβον.

However, if we introduce an object for τρέφων, we must then correct καρδίαν, the original object of ἀνατρέφων. Campbell, Ferrari and others follow Canter in emending καρδίαν to καρδίας, a genitive governed by ἐν φάει (‘in the light of the heart’).Footnote ¹⁷ This emendation raises serious semantic and stylistic issues.Footnote ¹⁸ Recent editors assign ἐν φάει | καρδίας two different meanings. Ferrari translates it as ‘cum laetitia cordis’, comparing two Aeschylean passages in which light is related to joy.Footnote ¹⁹ Metaphors involving light are common in Greek poetry,Footnote ²⁰ but Canter's emendation would produce an expression different both from the Aeschylean metaphors cited by Ferrari and from the Aeschylean passages in which the imagery of light is applied to emotions (for example Cho. 565 φαιδρᾷ φρενί): in the former cases, light is mentioned with no direct reference to a person's soul, while in the latter the light side of a person's soul is always described by an adjective related to the noun which in turn designates the seat of feelings.Footnote ²¹ The relationship between φάος (or a synonym) and emotion, then, is anything but obvious in fifth-century drama,Footnote ²² and Canter's emendation introduces an expression that is not idiomatic in Aeschylus. Moreover, the association between fear and the mental attitude implied by Ferrari's ‘cum laetitia cordis’ seems an unnecessary stretch.Footnote ²³ West's interpretation of the phrase looks even less persuasive: on the basis of a textually problematic parallel,Footnote ²⁴ West argues for the meaning ‘“in his dreams”, when the mind sees by its own light’.Footnote ²⁵ This interpretation seems too dense, while also implying that terror only emerges in dreams—a notion detrimental to a universal statement such as that of Eumenides.

II

None of these hypotheses is satisfying, and it remains difficult to determine where the corruption lies. It may be useful to try to restrict it to a specific point.

While, as we have seen, ἀνατρέφων carries an undesirable meaning, ἐν φάει does not look problematic at all. Editors have neglected a fundamental poetic meaning of φάος, that of ‘vital light’: since Homer, whoever sees the sunlight is alive.Footnote ²⁶ Accordingly, ‘to come to light’ means ‘to come (back) to life’: Agamemnon's return to life in Clytemnestra's dream in Sophocles’ Electra, for instance, is described as a return to light (419 ἐλθόντος ἐς φῶς). Analogously, the condition of being alive is frequently described in Greek tragedy by means of the prepositional expression ἐν φάει: see, for example, Eur. Hec. 415 ὦ θύγατερ, ἡμεῖς δ᾽ ἐν φάει δουλεύσομεν.Footnote ²⁷

In light of this, ἐν φάει in Eumenides seems anything but unintelligible, and certainly does not need to be expanded or specified by the genitive καρδίας. At Eum. 522–3, ἐν φάει has its most common meaning, that of ‘alive’, referring to τίς … | ἢ πόλις βροτός θ᾽; this interpretation, then, restores a widespread tragic idiom. If ἐν φάει need not be suspected, then nor does καρδίαν, and the accusative can retain its role of object for the participle.

As a consequence, we can conclude that the corruption concerns only ἀνατρέφων, or even better the prefix ἀνα–. The expression resulting from the removal of ἀνα–, namely καρδίαν τρέφων (‘nourishing the heart’), creates a metaphor suitable in tragic diction: verbs related to nourishment are frequently allowed figurative meanings (see, for example, Soph. Aj. 1124 for a similar image, ἡ γλῶσσά σου τὸν θυμὸν ὡς δεινὸν τρέφει).Footnote ²⁸ At Eum. 522–3, then, the emendation should concern only two syllables.

The only missing element is thus the concept of fear, which can be supplied by emending the two corrupt syllables of ἀνατρέφων. Since τρέφων already has an object, what the heart is fed with must be expressed by a dative indirect object, as often with τρέφειν.Footnote ²⁹ We may think, with Thomson, of φόβῳ,Footnote ³⁰ or of δέει.Footnote ³¹ As a result, the neutral pronoun μηδέν should be interpreted as an adverb, functioning as a negation of τρέφων.Footnote ³²

This hypothesis assigns to ἐν φάει an autonomous meaning that occurs frequently in tragedy, solves the problem with the sense of ἀνατρέφειν, creates a perfectly intelligible metaphor, introduces the concept of fear, and avoids an extremely rare metrical scansion.

III

To sum up, the text that we propose is:

Which may be translated as follows: ‘What city or man who never in their life nurtured their heart on fear would still revere Justice?’