Κηφισοῦ. Chr. Wordsworth (Athens and Attica p. 137) observes that the Athenian poets never praise the Ilissus (perhaps because it was too much associated with the prose of daily life), though Plato, in the Phaedrus, makes some amends; they keep their praises for the Cephisus (so Eur. Med. 835). On the other hand the Ilissus, not the Cephisus, is the representative river of Attica for more distant singers, from Apollonius Rhodius (I. 215) to Milton (Par. Reg. 4. 249). νομάδες, wandering. The word alludes to irrigation by ducts or canals (a system still in use), but does so far more poetically than would be the case if (with E. Curtius) we made it active, with ῥεέθρων for object. gen., “"distributing the streams."” There is no example of an adj. of this form (as “σποράς, στροφάς, φορβάς”) having an active sense. Cp. O. T. 1350 n.
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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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