The essence of the notion conveyed by μέτοικος, in ordinary Attic usage, was a voluntary sojourn, terminable at the will of the sojourner. Hence the irony here. With a similar force the Attic poets apply it to one who has found his “"last, long home"” in foreign earth.
: “"whether his friends decide to bring his ashes home, or to bury him among strangers, an alien utterly for ever"”: so a Persian whose corpse was left at Salamis is “σκληρᾶς μέτοικος γῆς ἐκεῖ” (Pers. 319): Eur. Her. 1033 “μέτοικος ἀεὶ κείσομαι κατὰ χθονὸς” (the Argive Eurystheus buried in Attica). Cp. O. T. 452 n.“εἴτ᾽ οὖν κομίζειν δόξα νικήσει φίλων,
εἴτ᾽ οὖν μέτοικον, εἰς τὸ πᾶν ἀεὶ ξένον,
θάπτειν
”
