[171] This passage is confessedly corrupt. Paley seems to have rightly restored ἄστολον from the ἄστολον θεωρίδα in Robertelli's edition. This ship, as he remarks, would truly be ἄστολος, in opposition to the one sent to Delphi, which was properly said στέλλεσθαι ἐπὶ θεωρίαν. The words ἀστιβῆ Ἀπόλλωνι confirm this opinion. In regard to the allusions, see Stanley and Blomfield, also Wyttenbach on Plato Phædon. sub. init.
[172] This repetition of δι᾽ ὧν is not altogether otiose. Their contention for estate was the cause both of their being αἰνόμοροι and of the νεῖκος that ensued.
[173] I.e. the sword. Cf. v. 885.
[174] This epithet applied to their ancestral tombs doubtless alludes to the violent deaths of Laïus and Œdipus.
[175] On the enallage σώματι for σώμασι see Griffiths. The poet means to say that this will be all their possession after death. Still Blomfield's reading, χώματι, seems more elegant and satisfactory.
[176] Pauw remarks that Polynices is the chief subject of Antigone's mourning, while Ismene bewails Eteocles. This may illustrate much of the following dialogue, as well as explain whence Sophocles derived his master-piece of character, the Theban martyr-heroine, Antigone.
[177] Throughout this scene I have followed Dindorf's text, although many improvements have been made in the disposition of the dramatis personæ. Every one will confess that the length of ἰὼ ἰὼ commonplaces in this scene would be much against the play, but for the animated conclusion, a conclusion, however, that must lose all its finest interest to the reader who is unacquainted with the Antigone of Sophocles!
[178] Wellauer (not Scholfield, as Griffiths says) defends the common reading from Herodot. V. 49.
[179] τράχυνε But T. Burgess' emendation τραχύς γε seems better, and is approved by Blomfield.
[180] Soph. Ant. 44. ἢ γὰρ νοεῖς θάπτειν σφ᾽ ἀπόρρητον πόλει.