ὃν ἀπόπτολιν εἴχομεν: ‘whom we had absent’=‘whose absence we had to endure’: schol. “ὃν ἐκτὸς εἴχομεν τῆς πόλεως”. (Paley would join “εἴχομεν ἀμμένουσαι”, ‘whom we had been waiting for’: this seems inadmissible.) παντᾷ, ‘utterly,’ goes with ἀπόπτολιν: it implies a contrast between this long unbroken absence and his former expeditions. Cp. Eur. fr. 966 “ἀκόλαστα πάντῃ”. (The Doric form was written “παντᾷ”.) The adv. could mean also, ‘in all directions,’ but that sense is less fitting. δυοκαιδεκάμηνον … χρόνον: more exactly, fifteen months (44 f.). πελάγιον: they imagined him as wandering on the sea, before or after his Lydian bondage: cp. 100 ff., Ant.785“φοιτᾷς δ᾽ ὑπερπόντιος” (n.).
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Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part V: The Trachiniae. Sir Richard C. Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1902.
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