ŒDIPUS AT COLONOS.
85
Kephisos' wandering streams;[1]
They fail not from their spring, but evermore,
Swift-rushing into birth,
Over the plain they sweep,
The land of broad, full breast,
With clear and stainless wave.690
Nor do the Muses in their minstrel choirs,
Hold it in slight esteem,
Nor Aphrodite with her golden reins.[2]
Stroph. II.
And in it grows a marvel such as ne'er
On Asia's soil I heard,
Nor the great Dorian isle from Pelops named,[3]
A plant self-sown, that knows
No touch of withering age,
Terror of hostile swords,
Which here on this our ground
Its high perfection gains,700
The grey-green foliage of the olive-tree,[4]
Rearing a goodly race:
And never more shall man,
- ↑ The streams of the Kephisos are still carried through many small channels, watering the fields and gardens of the peasants. And the local name (Νομαί) is all but identical with that by which Sophocles describes them.
- ↑ Here, also, there is a reference to local sanctuaries. In the Academeia there was an altar to the Muses; near its entrance one to Eros. It is permissible to trace something of a poet's serene complacency in the words which speak of the Muses as not slighting his own birth-place. The epithet "golden-reined" refers probably to some sculpture representing Aphrodite drawn by doves.
- ↑ The anachronism which makes Œdipus anticipate the Dorian migration may be pardoned by those who remember that Shakespeare puts a quotation from Aristotle into the mouth of Hector.
- ↑ The first olive-tree had sprung up, according to Attic legends, in the Acropolis at the bidding of Athena. From it came that which was planted in the Academeia, and from that the holy olives (μορίαι) which formed its groves, and were placed under the special guardianship of the Areopagos.
