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

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When Oedipus knows that his end is near, he leads his

The καταρ: ράκτης ὀδός.

friends to a place called the καταρράκτης ὀδός, the "sheer threshold," “"bound by brazen steps to earth's roots."” Soph. OC 1591 There can be no doubt that this "threshold" denotes a natural fissure or chasm, supposed to be the commencement of a passage leading down to the nether world. Such a chasm exists at the foot of the Areiopagus, where Pausanias saw a tomb of Oedipus in the precinct of the Eumenides. Near this, at the S.W. angle of the Acropolis, was a shrine of Demeter Chloë¹. Are we to suppose, then, that Sophocles alludes to the chasm at the Areiopagus, and that "the hill of Demeter Euchloüs" means this shrine of Demeter Chloë on the slope of the Acropolis? This view²—which the coincidence might reasonably suggest—seems to present insuperable difficulties. At v. 643 Theseus asks Oedipus whether he will come to Athens or stay at Colonus. He replies that he will stay at Colonus, because it is the scene appointed for his victory over his foes (646). But the victory was to take place at his grave (411); which the poet therefore supposed to be at or near Colonus,—not at Athens. If, then, in the time of Sophocles an Areiopagus-legend already claimed the grave of Oedipus, the poet disregarded it. And, when the grave was to be associated with Colonus, it would be strange to send Oedipus so far for the purpose of vanishing at the Areiopagus. The brevity of the choral ode which separates the final exit of Oedipus (1555) from the entrance of the Messenger (1579) implies, as does the whole context, that Oedipus passed away somewhere near the grove—not at a distance of more than a mile and a half, as the other theory requires. Then the phrase “Εὐχλόου Δήμητρος πάγος” (1600) applies to the knoll far more naturally than to a shrine at the foot of the Acropolis. Referring to a tomb of Oedipus which he saw in the precinct of the Furies at the Areiopagus, Pausanias says: “"On inquiry, I found that the bones had been brought from Thebes. As to the version of the death of Oedipus given by Sophocles, Homer did not permit me to think it credible."”³ (since the Iliad buries Oedipus at Thebes). Thus Pausanias, at least, understood Sophocles to mean that the grave was somewhere near Colonus. It did not occur to him that the Colonus-myth as to the grave could be harmonised with the Areiopagus-myth. Sophocles adopts the Colonus-myth unreservedly; nor can I believe that he intended, by any deliberate vagueness, to leave his hearers free to think of the Areiopagus. The chasm called the καταρράκτης ὀδός must be imagined, then, as not very distant from the grove. No such chasm is visible at the present day in the neighbourhood of Colonus. But this fact is insufficient to prove that no appearance of the kind can have existed there in antiquity⁴.