Note 1184 — Chapter IV · THE RELATION OF SOUL AND BODY. (continued 3)

This fact is recognised by Geddes in his edition of the Phaedo, in the course of his note (p. 280 ff.) on the difficulty concerning the words ἢ λόγου θείου τινὸς in cap. 33 (p. 85 D). He does not however infer that the words really contrasted are ἀλάστωρ and δαίμων, but claims for the particle ἢ an epexegetic sense (‘or, in other words,’) besides its usual disjunctive sense (‘or else’). I am far from being satisfied that the epexegetic use of ἢ existed at all in Classical Greek, which idiomatically employed καὶ in that way. At any rate its existence is not proved by the other passages which Geddes cites—Aesch. Pers. 430 and Soph. Phil. 934—where the ἢ perhaps equals vel rather than aut, but has none of the epexegetic sense of sive.