πατρῷον ἄστυ γῆς, not for “πατρῴας γῆς ἄστυ”, but simply “"his father's city in the land"” (the gen. γῆς as 45), i.e. the city from which Aegeus (69) had swayed Attica. The poets can use “πατρῷος” as=“πάτριος”; but in the mouth of Oed. (O. T. 1450) “πατρῷον ἄστυ” means the city of Laïus, and in that of Ant. (Ant. 937) the city of Oedipus: on the other hand, “τὰ πάτρια...δώματα” (O. T. 1394), his “"ancestral"” home. ἔχει = "is in," cp. 37. Isocrates conceives the line of hereditary Attic kings as having been unbroken from Erichthonius down to Theseus (Panath. § 126). The greatness of Athens as the centre of government was reputed to date from Theseus; but the royal seat of his predecessors was supposed to have been a lesser Athens (the acropolis and the part south of it. Thuc. 2.15), from which they swayed Attica while its communes were still independent (“σποράδην καὶ κατὰ κώμας οἰκοῦσαν”, Isocr. Encom. Helen. § 35). σκοπὸς refers to the quality in which the man of Colonus had presented himself to Oed. (35), and so helps him at once to know who is meant. The word can mean "messenger" only in the sense of "one sent to obtain news"; but we need not change it, as Wecklein does, to πομπός.
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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