πανάρχοις is fitting, since each brother claimed the sole power (373). γεραίτερος, (Jacobs and Nauck,) for γεραιτέρᾳ, has been received by several edd., including Dindorf and Wecklein. The common idiom doubtless favours it; yet the phrase, “"brought into being by the elder birth,"” is surely intelligible as a poetical fusion of “γονῇ προτέρᾳ πεφυκώς” with “γεραίτερος πεφυκώς”. In Attic prose the comparative of “γεραιός” always implies the contrast between youth and a more advanced period of life ( Thuc. 6.18 “ἅμα νέοι γεραιτέροις βουλεύοντες”). The use in the text, to denote merely priority of birth (Attic “πρεσβύτερος”), is Ionic, as Her. 6.52 “ἀμφότερα τὰ παιδία ἡγήσασθαι βασιλέας, τιμᾶν δὲ μᾶλλον τὸν γεραίτερον”: and poetical, as Theocr. 15. 139 “ὁ γεραίτατος εἴκατι παίδων”.
This text is part of:
Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part II: The Oedipus Coloneus. Sir Richard C. Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1899.
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