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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Neither 
can stand. ‘Argos of the land’ (or, ‘of land’) is nonsense, and even if it were not, is absurd as an apostrophe of the River Inachus. 
‘a plain’, indistinguishable from 
is similarly impossible: the audience would be baffled; 
in 6 has to be the first occurrence of the vox; ‘streams’ cannot be apposed to a ‘plain’, even if 
could have been understood as meaning this.
2 Some of these, like Eur. El.1, are ‘hanging’: so too the initia of the Alcestis and the Andromache (where read 
with VP and Hermann). A semantic distinction is to be made between 
nom. and 
voc. in tragedy (despite the evident metrical expediency of the nom.). It is true that nom. is occasionally found where voc. might have been expected (e.g. with 
, Aesch. Ag.508–9, fr.14012, Soph. Phil. 1453–5; not vice versa); but transition from exclamation to address is to be recognized in such places as Soph. El.1354–5, Ant. 1284–5, Trach.1040–1, Phil. 530–1, 1348, Eur. Alc. 568–70, Andr.1186–7, cf. Aesch. P. V. 88–92. The voc. at Eur. El. 54, 
must be acknowledged to be anomalous.
