ὅ τ̓, neut. of the epic relat. “ὅς τε”: cp. El.151“ἅ τ̓” (“ἥ τ̓”). There is no metrical ground for reading ἅ τ̓ (fem.) here, since the syllable, forming the anacrusis of the verse, is properly short: in the antistrophic v. El., 834, ὃν before “τέκετο” is a long substituted for a short.
ἔλακεν, of oracular utterance, Ant.1094.
ἐκφέροι, intrans., ‘come to an end’: schol. “παρέλθοι”. Anintrans. “ἐκφέρειν” occurs elsewhere only as meaning ‘to shoot ahead’ in a race: see on O. C.1424(where “ἐκφέρει” is best taken as 2nd pers. pres. midd., ‘fulfil for thyself’). But the sense found here is parallel with that of the intrans. “ἐκδιδόναι” and “ἐξιέναι”, as said of rivers, ‘to issue.’
δωδέκατος ἄροτος: the twelfth year from the time when the oracle was given at Dodona: see n. on 44. Apollodorus names the same term, though, acc. to his version, the oracle was given at Delphi (2. 4. 12).
This is the only passage of the play which mentions the period of twelve years. In 44 f. and 164 f., the reference is merely to the fifteen months which, when Heracles left home, were still wanting to those twelve years. It may be asked, then, whence the Chorus derive their knowledge of the twelve years; for Deianeira, in 155 ff., speaks as if they had not then heard of the oracle. The answer is simply that this inconsistency of detail was overlooked by the poet; the term of twelve years was in his mind, as a familiar part of the story; and he forgot that, if the Chorus were to know it, Deianeira ought to have mentioned it.
Needless difficulties have been made by assuming that the allusion here must be to the fifteen months of 44 f. and 164 f. Even then, however, it has to be supposed that ‘twelve months’ are put loosely for ‘fifteen.’
ἄροτος, ‘year’: 69 n.
ἀναδοχὰν τελεῖν (fut.) πόνων: the subject to the inf. is “αὐτόν” supplied from “ἄροτος”: ‘that it (the twelfth year) should end the succession of toils.’ τελεῖν could not be intrans., with “ἀναδοχάν” for subject. The apparently intrans. use of the verb is limited to such phrases as the following: El.1419“τελοῦσ᾽ ἀραί” (are doing their work): Aesch. Th.659“εἰσόμεσθ᾽ ὅπῃ τελεῖ” (‘how the god will ordain’): cp. Aesch. Ch.1021, Aesch. Pers.225.
