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

---

---

κείνην ἐρείψεις is a certain correction (by Turnebus, Paris, ann. 1553) of κείνην ἐρεῖ τις, and has been accepted by nearly all subsequent editors. Cp. the threat “Θήβης ἄστυ δῃώσειν πυρί”, 1319: and “κατασκάψαντι”, 1421. It was necessary to take Thebes by storm before Polyneices could establish his power. The only natural sense for the MS. reading is, “"for it is impossible that any one shall call Thebes a city."” In Aeschylus Eum. 457 the total destruction of Troy is expressed by the phrase “σὺ Τροίαν ἄπολιν Ἰλίου πόλιν ι ἔθηκας”, “"madest it to be no city"”: and the MS. reading here might more easily be defended if the sense were precisely the opposite to what it actually is.—Campbell, keeping ἐρεῖ τις, renders, “"for there is one"” (i.e. Polyneices) “"who shall never call Thebes his “city”."” But there is nothing in the Greek answering to “"his."” The general associations of the word “πόλις” surely could not supply the absence of the essential word “αὑτοῦ”. There is no contrast here, surely, between ἄστυ, as “"town,"” and πόλις, as civitas.

αἵματι … μιανθεὶς, not merely “"covered with (thine own) blood,"” but “"stained with a brother's blood,"” as Ant. 171 (of these brothers) “παίσαντές τε καὶ ι πληγέντες αὐτόχειρι σὺν μιάσματι”.