Sir Richard C. Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Trachiniae

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παρεισδέδεγμαι “κ.τ.λ.” Among the captives whom she has received into her house, there is one who is to be her rival. This suggests the comparison with the master of a trading vessel, who, along with the rest of his cargo, ships some merchandise which is destined to prove his ruin. The parallelism between φόρ- τον and “λωβητὸν ἐμπόλημα” marks that the “φόρτος”, too, is disastrous: but the way in which it is so is left indefinite. There is no explicit reference to overloading.—For παρεισδέδεγμαι cp. De part. anim. 1 (p. 662 a 9) “ἀναγκαῖον ...παρεισδέχεσθαι τὸ ὑγρὸν ἅμα τῇ τροφῇ” (=‘to receive incidentally’). So, here, the “παρά” seems to mean strictly, ‘have received as an incident of receiving the others’ (Iolè having come in among them); cp. “παραπολλύναι” etc. The objection to taking the prep. as=‘surreptitiously’ (=“λαθραῖον” in 377) is that Deianeira was the victim, not agent, of the fraud.

λωβητὸν in active sense, as Ph.607“λωβήτ᾽ ἔπη”, words of contumely.

ἐμπόλημα, a thing gained by traffic; here, an ‘acquisition’ (in an ironical sense).

τῆς ἐμῆς φρενός with λωβητὸν: cp. the gen. after “λυμαντήριος, ὀλέθριος”, etc. It might also depend on the phrase “λωβητὸν ἐμπόλημα” as=“βλάβη”. Others understand: ‘a disastrous merchandise, (bought by) my loyalty to Heracles’ (“τ<*> ἐμῆς φρενός” as gen. of price).