παντὸς … δρῶντος. (1) Usu. explained:—“"when he had content of all service,"” i.e. when his daughters had done for him all that he wished. Then “πᾶν δρῶν” will be “"every activity"” of attendants: cp. the Homeric “δρηστῆρες, δρήστειραι”, of servants, Od. 10.349 etc. (2) A better view is: “"when of doing all he had content"” (as Whitelaw), when “πᾶν δρῶν” is his own activity. Cp. “τὸ βουλόμενον τῆς γνώμης” and similar phrases (see on 267): also Thuc. 1.142 “ἐν τῷ μὴ μελετῶντι”, “"in the absence of practice."” As to Tr. 196 “τὸ γὰρ ποθοῦν ἕκαστος ἐκμαθεῖν θέλων”,—where “τὸ ποθοῦν” used to be explained as “"the desire within him,"”—it is now generally held to be corrupt (E. Thomas conjectures “τὰ γὰρ ποθείν̓”). But the absence of the art. makes “πᾶν δρῶν” a bolder expression than any of these; nor can the adverbial “ἐν ἀμείβοντι”, “"alternately,"” (Pind. N. 11. 42) be properly compared. I suspect, then, that the text is corrupt. To Mekler's conjecture (see cr. n.) the obstacle is ἔδρων instead of “ἔδρασαν”. The obvious ἔρωτος (“"desire"”) should not be too lightly rejected: cp. 436.
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.
Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education provided support for entering this text.
This text was converted to electronic form by professional data entry and has been proofread to a high level of accuracy.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.