T. G. Tucker, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 8

Καρτερίοις Pliny, v. 38 [138], says, Carteria iuxta Smyrnam insula, which is incorrect as to position but may be true as to the insula. The plural points to a group. The nearest point of [the Phocaeid] to Chios by sea is some fortyfive miles distant. The Arginusae islands may be reckoned at some twenty-five miles farther.

ὑπεραιωροῦνται. All MSS. but one inferior copy give the meaningless περαιοῦνται; that copy has δειπνοποιοῦντες, and from this reading and the coenavere of Valla editors mostly read δειπνοποιοῦνται. But, as Classen pertinently asks, ‘wie erklart sich diese sonderbare Erscheinung?’ δειπνοποιοῦνται cannot have become περαιοῦνται by any comprehensible error. A glance at the map will show the disproportion between the distances accomplished on the first and second day, and also how small a voyage (25 miles) was effected between the ἄριστον of this day and the following night. It is evident that some stay was made at Arginusae, and naturally so, inasmuch as the fleet wished to pass between Mytilene and the mainland when it was dark. The word of which περαιοῦνται is a corruption was presumably a similar but uncommon word. Taking these considerations together, one may feel justified in inserting in the text ὑπεραιωροῦνται, ‘they lie at anchor off.’ Cf. Hdt. vi. 116, οἱ δὲ βάρβαροι τῇσι νηυσὶ ὑπεραιωρηθέντες Φαλήρου, τοῦτο γὰρ ἧν ἐπίνειον τότε τῶν Ἀθηναλων, ὑπὲρ τούτου ἀνοκωχεύσαντες τὰς νέας ἀπέπλεον ὀπίσω ἐς τὴν Ἀσίην. The Arginusae islands are at the limit of the territory of Cyme, and ‘when the Peloponnesians have coasted along this territory’ they stop till dead of night (παραπλεύσαντες τὴν Κυμαίαν ὑπεραιωροῦνται κ.τ.λ.) They do not now put into the mainland (which from this point was dependent on Mytilene), but lie off it at Arginusae.

τῆς ἠπείρου has caused some difficulty. P - S brackets it. Others take it that Ἀργινοῦσσαι, like Σύβοτα (i. 47, 50), comprehended a part of the mainland in the immediate vicinity of the islands, so that Ἀργινούσσαις τῆς ἠπείρου = ‘the mainland portion of Arginusae.’ This is possible; but with the reading ὑπεραιωροῦνται the genitive is directly governed by that verb, and the whole = ‘they lie at anchor off the mainland’ (and not actually on its shore), ἐν τῷ ἀντιπέρας τῆς Μυτιλήνης means not ‘on the mainland opposite M.’ but ‘across the water from M.’