Sir Richard C. Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Oedipus Tyrannus

[1350] The νομάδος of the MSS. is corrupt. It would require an improbable alteration in the strophe （see on 1330）; and it yields no good sense. The Scholiasts hesitated between rendering it （1） “feeding on my flesh ”! or （2） “in the pastures.” Reading νομάδ᾽, we have a dochmiac dimeter, agreeing with 1330: see Metrical Analysis. But the use of the word is extraordinary. It must mean ἐν νομαῖς, “in the pastures”—said of the babe whom the shepherd had been ordered to expose on Cithaeron. Now elsewhere νομάς always means “roaming,” said （e.g.） of pastoral tribes, or of animals: Soph. Trach. 271 “ἵππους νομάδας ἐξιχνοσκοπῶν,” tracking horse that had strayed: fr. 87 νομὰς δέ τις κεροῦσσ᾽ ἀπ᾽ ὀρθίων πάγων ι καθεῖρπεν ἔλαφος: of waters wandering over the land which they irrigate, Soph. OC 686 “κρῆναι ... ι Κηφισοῦ νομάδες ῥεέθρων.” The idea of wandering movement is inseparable from the word. To apply it to a babe whose feet were pinned together would have been indeed a bold use. Prof. Campbell, retaining νομάδος, takes πέδας as acc. plur.: “that loosed the cruel clog upon my feet, when I was sent astray.” But could νομάς, ‘roaming, ’ be said of the maimed child merely in the sense of ‘turned adrift’ by its parents? The nomin. νομὰς, referring to the roving shepherd （πλάνης 1029） would be intelligible; but the quadruple -ας is against it. Now cp. Aesch. Pers. 734 “μονάδα δὲ Ξέρξην ἔρημον,” “Xerxes alone and forlorn. ” Simply transposing ν and μ I conjecture μονάδ᾽, a word appropriate to the complaint that the babe, sent to the lonely mountain, had not been left to perish in its solitude. The fact that the Corinthian shepherd received the child from the Theban is no objection: the child was φίλων μεμονωμένος, desolate and forlorn. ἔλυσ᾽, which suits the dochmiac as well as ἔλαβέ μ᾽, is more forcible here. There is a further argument for it. The MSS. give ἀπ᾽ ἀγρίας in 1349, but the strophe （1329） shows that ἀπ᾽ must be omitted, since Ἀπόλλων, φίλοι = ὃς ἀγρίας πέδας, the first syllable of ἀγρίας being short, as in 1205, Soph. Ant. 344, 1124. Now πέδας （i.e. πέδης） ἔλαβε, took from the fetter, would be too harsh: we could only do as Schneidewin did, and refer ἀπό back to πέδας: but though Δελφῶν κἀπὸ Δαυλίας （734） admits of such treatment, the case is dissimilar here. On the other hand πέδας ἔλυσ᾽, loosed from the fetter, is correct. Thus the metrical impossibility of ἀπ᾽ confirms ἔλυσ᾽. The epithet ἀγρία, “cruel, ” is applied to πέδη as it is to ὀδύνη in Soph. Trach. 975.