Sir Richard C. Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Oedipus at Colonus

νομοῦ, being always masc., could not agree with Οἰάτιδος, and the latter, without art., could not stand for “Οἰάτιδος γῆς”: while “Οἰατέος” is most improbable.

πελῶς᾿, if sound, must be fut. of “πελάζω”, as “πελᾶν” clearly is in El. 497. The evidence for a pres. “πελάω” is scanty ( Hom. Hymn. 7.44 “πελάαν”: poet. ap. Plut. Mor. 457 C imperat. “πέλα”: Oppian Cyn. 1. 514 “πελάει”: cp. Veitch Irreg. Verbs). The fut. seems defensible here, as=“"they will (presently) approach"”: though Hartung's περῶς᾿ may be right. Construe, then: — ἤ που πελῶσ᾽ εἰς ἐφέσπερον πέτρ. νιφ. Οἰάτιδος νομόν: “"or perchance they will presently approach the pastures to the west of the snowy rock of Oea."”

The place meant is not certain. See note and map in Appendix. But the scholium here deserves at least thus much weight: it is our one ancient warrant for a definite view. Like the other old scholia in L, it probably dates (in substance) from the later Alexandrian age, which possessed many Attic writings, now lost, on the topography of Attica. The scholiast takes the νιφὰς πέτρα to be a rock or crag of Mount Aegaleos;— the same which was called “λεία πέτρα”, “"the smooth rock,"” by Istros, a writer on Attica, c. 240 B.C., whom he quotes. The schol. then explains Οἰάτιδος by the fact that Aegaleos “ἐπ᾽ ἐσχάτων ἐστὶ τοῦ δήμου τούτου”, “"skirts that deme,"” —namely, of “Οἴη”. It cannot reasonably be doubted that this statement about “Οἴη”, if it did not rest on the scholiast's own knowledge, was derived from Istros, or from some other old writer on Attic topography.

The meaning will then be:—“"Or perhaps the captors did not take the road through the pass of Daphnè, which goes by the sea-coast to Eleusis. Perhaps they went round the N. end of Aegaleos, and will soon be emerging on the Thriasian plain, to the west of Aegaleos, near the deme of Oea."” This is also Leake's view (Demi of Attica p. 154). The route supposed would be in the general line of that taken by Archidamus and the Peloponnesians in 431 B.C., when they moved from Oenoe E.S.E. to Acharnae, “ἐν δεξιᾷ ἔχοντες τὸ Αἰγάλεων ὄρος”,— i.e. keeping it to the S.,—“διὰ Κρωπιᾶς”, a deme in the valley between the N. end of Aegaleos and the S.W. end of Parnes. Hartung, referring to the “λεία πέτρα” of Istros, conjectures λι^τάδος, as=“"smooth,"” for νιφάδος: but though late poets could use “λι^τός” for “λι_τός”, the “ι^” is most improbable for Soph.