Sir Richard C. Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Antigone

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κελαινὰν θῖνα, the dark-coloured mud or sand that the storm stirs up from the bottom of the sea. “θίς” is masc. in Homer, Ar. , and Arist. , and that was prob. its usual gender. Soph. has it fem. again in Soph. Ph. 1124, and so it is in later writers. In the “ ιλ.θίς” is always the sea-shore; in Od.that is its regular sense, but once (12. 45) it means ‘heap.’ It is used as here by Aristoph. Vesp. 696 “ὥς μου τὸν θῖνα ταράττεις” (my very depths). Verg. G. 3. 240 “at ima exaestuat unda Vorticibus, nigramque alte subiectat arenam.”

δυσάνεμοι should be read. δυσάνεμον could not here be adv. with “βρέμουσιν”, and must therefore be epithet of “θῖνα”, when it could mean only “τὴν ὑπὸ ἀνέμων ταραχθεῖσαν” (schol.), i.e. ‘stirred up by the storm,’—a strained sense for it. Cp. Apoll. Rhod. 1. 593 “ἀκτήν τ᾽ αἰγιαλόν τε δυσήνεμον.”

στόνῳ βρ.: cp. 427.

ἀντιπλῆγες (only here) ἀκταί, headlands which are struck in front, struck full, by the waves; in contrast with “παραπλῆγες”, ‘struck obliquely’: see Od. 5.417 (Odysseus seeking a place to land) “ἤν που ἐφεύρω ι ἠτονάς τε παραπλῆγας λιμένας τε θαλάσσης” (‘shores where the waves strike aslant’). Soph. was doubtless thinking of the Homeric phrase.—Not (1) ‘beating back the waves,’ “ἀντίτυποι”: nor (2) ‘beaten again,’—i.e. by the everreturning waves. This last is impossible. —Cp. O. C. 1240 where Oed. is likened to a “βόρειος...ἀκτὰ κυματοπλήξ”. Oppian Cyn. 2. 142“κρημνοῖσι καὶ ὑδατοπλήγεσιν ἄκραις”.