μοῦνος ἀπ᾽ ἄλλων, alone, apart from his fellows: an epic phrase; Hymn. Hom. 3. 193 “ὁ δὲ ταῦρος ἐβόσκετο μοῦνος ἀπ᾽ ἄλλων”: cp. Od. 16. 239“μούνω ἄνευθ᾽ ἄλλων.” στικτῶν (the epithet of an ἔλαφος in El. 568, and of “νεβρίδες” in Eur. Bacch. 111) naturally suggests deer, and, acc. to one interpretation, is meant here to denote the class of ‘peaceful animals,’ as dist. from λασίων, beasts of prey. The latter epithet, it might be objected, could equally well suggest goats and sheep. Another and stranger view is that στικτῶν means birds (pictae volucres), as dist. from beasts. Obviously the poet used the epithets simply in order to call up a general picture of creatures that haunt the wilds; he was not carefully classifying them. Cp. 937. μετὰ. The last syllable of a verse is of variable value (“ἀδιάφορος”, anceps); i.e., a short may stand for a long, as here, or vice versa. Cp. Heinrich Schmidt, Rhythmic and Metric, p. 58, who cites Aesch. Ag. 1531 “εὐπάλαμον μέριμναν ι ὅπα” κ.τ.λ.: the “-α^ν” there serves as “-α_ν”. So 188 (“ἀθυρόστομος”), 1089 (“ἆμαρ”), 1104 (“ὕστερον”), 1110 (“χερςὶν”), etc. It is needless, then, to alter “μετά.” ἔν τ᾽ ὀδύναις=“ἐν ὀδύναις τε” (cp. O. T. 258 n.): for this “ἐν” of circumstance, ib. 1112 “ἐν...μακρῷ ι γήρᾳ”, n.
This text is part of:
Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, with critical notes, commentary, and translation in English prose. Part IV: The Philoctetes. Sir Richard C. Jebb. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1932.
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