Chapter II: Ethnology (10)

This is spoken by the Trojan herald of the possible adjustment of the quarrel, upon which, he says, we shall dwell quietly in Troy, and _they_ will return to Argos and Achæis. By “they” he means all the Greeks, therefore the country to which they return means all Greece.

4. It may be a question whether Ἄργος, in combination with μέσος, includes the whole of Greece, as in the speech of Diomed to Glaucus:

τῷ νῦν σοι μὲν ἐγὼ ξεῖνος φίλος Ἄργεï μέσσῳ
εἰμὶ, σὺ δ’ ἐν Λυκίῃ[640].

5. It is also a question, what is the geographical force of Argos, even when standing alone. It is manifestly wide in certain passages. Thus Paris mentions the κτήματα,

ὅσσ’ ἀγόμην ἐξ Ἄργεος ἡμέτερον δῶ[641]:

and Polydamas, speaking of the possible destruction of the Greek army,

νωνύμνους ἀπολέσθαι ἀπ’ Ἄργεος ἐνθάδ’ Ἀχαιούς[642].

a line repeated elsewhere. On the other hand, the word in some places has undoubtedly a limited meaning only.

6. Again, we find the word Ἀχαίïς γαῖα, used apparently with the intention of signifying the whole Greek country; as in the first Iliad by Nestor;

ὦ πόποι, ἢ μέγα πένθος Ἀχαίïδα γαῖα ἱκάνει[643].

7. And we have the same word Ἀχαίïς without γαῖα, both in the Iliad and the Odyssey.

For instance, when Nestor and Ulysses were collecting the Greek forces, they were

λαὸν ἀγείροντες κατ’ Ἀχαίïδα πουλυβότειραν[644].

And Ulysses, addressing his mother in the Shades beneath, says,

οὐ γάρ πω σχέδον ἦλθον Ἀχαίïδος, οὐδέ πω ἀμῆς
γῆς ἐπέβην[645].

To proceed first with what is most clear, I think it may be taken for certain that Ἀχαίïς, with or without the affix γαῖα or αἶα[646], means nothing less than the whole of Greece in the passages where Homer uses this appellative alone. One passage, indeed, taken alone, affords decisive proof for itself that even the islands are included. Telemachus[647] thus describes his mother as unrivalled in Greece:

οἵη νῦν οὐκ ἔστι γύνη κατ’ Ἀχαίïδα γαῖαν
οὔτε Πύλου ἱερῆς, οὔτ’ Ἄργεος, οὔτε Μυκήνης,
οὔτ’ αὐτῆς Ἰθάκης, οὔτ’ ἠπείροιο μελαίνης.

For here are clearly enumerated as among the parts of Ἀχαίïς, several Peloponnesian states, the island of Ithaca, and the continent, evidently meaning that to the North of the Corinthian gulf.

And yet it may remain true that, though commonly meaning Greece at large, Ἀχαίïς may still have a more special connection with the South, as the whole of this island is called Britain, whereas the name has been derived especially from its southern inhabitants.

But in the passages numbered (1) and (3) we find the whole of Greece designated by the use, not of one, but of two expressions: in the first case they are,

1. Ἕλλας.
2. μέσον Ἄργος.

In the second they are,

1. Ἄργος.
2. Ἀχαίïς.

And with these we may compare the expression, evidently meant to cover all the Greeks, in Il. ii. 530, under the names

1. Πανέλληνες.
2. Ἀχαιοί.

Now there are here three ways in which the words may be used so as to convey their joint sense, which I assume to be that of Greece _entire_: viz.

1. That each word should cover a part, the two parts together making up the whole, _i.e._ that the words should be used distributively.

2. That each should cover the whole, and that the words should be used cumulatively.

3. That one of the words should apply to a part of Greece only, and should be overlapped as it were by the other, that other meaning the whole.

Now as Ἀχαίïς uniformly means all Greece in eight passages where it stands alone, this will naturally govern its sense in the two passages, where it is joined copulatively with Ἄργος. We shall also hereafter see the local use of the Ἀχαιοὶ so diffused, that it would hardly be possible to suppose any other meaning. Thus, then, we have one point fixed, from which to operate upon others.

But what does the Ἄργος ἱππόβοτον mean?

It is demonstrable that in Homer the word Ἄργος has several meanings.

1. It is a city, as in Il. iv. 51,

ἤτοι ἐμοὶ τρεῖς μὲν πολὺ φίλταται εἰσὶ πόληες
Ἄργος τε, Σπάρτη τε, καὶ εὐρυάγυια Μυκήνη.
τὰς διαπέρσαι κ.τ.λ.

2. It is a limited territory, probably such as was afterwards the State of Argolis. For when Telemachus is quitting Sparta, Theoclymenus joins him[648], φεύγων ἐξ Ἄργεος. And again, when Melampus quitted Pylos, he came to Argos:

ὁ δ’ ἄλλων ἵκετο δῆμον
Ἄργος ἐς ἱππόβοτον[649].

The first proves that Sparta was not included in the geographical name Ἄργος: the second proves the same of Pylos: and this too is the Ἄργος ἱππόβοτον.

The same phrase is used in Od. iii. 263, of Ægisthus, who endeavours to corrupt Clytemnestra,

μυχῷ Ἄργεος ἱπποβότοιο.

Here Mycenæ is plainly meant by the μυχὸς, and the Ἄργος ἱππόβοτον is Argolis, or something like it.

This district, including Mycenæ, was the head quarter of the Greek power. Now we find that the whole dominion of Priam was named Τροίη, while including many cities and much territory, and the name Τροίη was also sometimes applied to the capital, of which the proper name was Ilion. So Venezia at the present day means both a city and a territory, even though the city is outside the territory; the only distinction lying in the use or non-use of the article. Therefore it was sufficiently natural, that the Trojan herald should name the whole from the most excellent part, and so identify them: and on the other hand, it would not be otherwise than natural, were he to name the most excellent part, and likewise to name the whole, without verbally distinguishing them.

So that in Il. iii. 75, 258, the phrase Ἄργος ἐς ἱππόβοτον, according to what has preceded, may either mean,

1. The part of the Peloponnesus containing Argos and Mycenæ as its head quarter, (and then the line must be interpreted in the third of the modes above pointed out; as we might now say, ‘we visited Rome and Italy.’)

2. Or it may mean the whole of Greece, by transfer from its capital part, and then the line must be interpreted in the second mode, as might now be said, ‘to our Green Erin, our Ireland mother of the brave.’

The English ‘and’ would indeed mar the sense: but the Greek καὶ is much more elastic, and may be equivalent to the Italian _ossia_, or to the sign =.

I doubt if there be any passage in Homer where the word Argos stands alone, or with a characteristic epithet such as ἱππόβοτον, and where it requires any other sense than one of the three just given--the city--the north east of Peloponnesus--and (by metonymy) all Greece.

When Nestor (Il. ii. 348) denounces those Greeks who should think of returning home before the mind of Jupiter is known, and calls returning Ἄργοσδε ἰέναι, it seems indisputable that we must construe Ἄργος Greece.

When Paris says he brought the κτήματα from Argos, the most natural construction is, as the place was Sparta, and therefore not Argos in the narrow sense, from which he took them, that he means by Argos to signify Greece.

When Sisyphus dwells at Ephyre, μυχῷ Ἄργεος ἱπποβότοιο, the word means the north eastern district Peloponnesus[650].

The word Ἄργος in the Catalogue (ii. 559) most probably means the city only.

As it is plain that in some passages it cannot mean the Peloponnesus, and as that meaning does not appear to be supported by superior probability in any place, such a meaning ought not to be admitted.

_Achaic and Iasian Argos._

It is another question how we ought to construe the phrases μέσον Ἄργος--Ἀχαιïκὸν Ἄργος, used four times--and Ἴασον Ἄργος.

The two latter are evidently analogous to Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος, which we have already found to mean Thessaly.

Of the four passages where we read the phrase Ἀχαιïκὸν Ἄργος, the two first[651] relate to the return of Agamemnon and the Greeks, and appear to admit therefore either of the limited sense of a portion of Peloponnesus as the most eminent part, or of the extended one of all Greece, better than of the intermediate one of Peloponnesus itself, with which neither Agamemnon, nor the whole body of the Greeks, had any separate and defined relation, as they had with the dominions of Agamemnon in the capacity of their supreme Chief, and perhaps with those of the Pelopid family jointly, so as to include Menelaus.

In the third case it is used of Juno, as she goes to hasten the birth of Eurystheus[652],

καρπαλίμως δ’ ἵκετ’ Ἄργος Ἀχαιïκὸν, ἔνθ’ ἄρα ᾔδη
ἰφθίμην ἄλοχον Σθενέλου Περσηïάδαο.

This passage evidently admits the sense of the city, or a limited district, better than that of the Peloponnesus at large. Indeed, as the seat of the Perseid dominion is evidently intended, and as that dominion did not reach over all Peloponnesus, we may say that this could not be the meaning of the words.

But the fourth passage requires a larger signification for this phrase. It is the question of Telemachus, asking where Menelaus had been during all the time that Ægisthus was about his crime[653];

ποῦ Μενέλαος ἔην;
ἢ οὐκ Ἄργεος ἦεν Ἀχαιïκοῦ, ἀλλὰ πῇ ἄλλῃ
πλάζετ’ ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπους;

This seems clearly to include Sparta in Achaic Argos; and, this being so, no meaning is so suitable to it in this place as Eastern Peloponnesus. This construction is also eminently suitable to the relation between Eastern Peloponnesus and the Achæan power, which had its central seat there.

Undoubtedly Strabo treats Ἀχαιïκὸν Ἄργος as meaning the whole of Peloponnesus (viii. 5. p. 365, ibid. 6. p. 369), but the argument from Homer’s text seems to be against him: and even he admits from Od. iii. 249, that the term applied also to Laconia in particular: ἀλλὰ καὶ ἰδίως τὴν Λακωνικὴν οὕτω προσαγορευθῆναι[654].

As then it appears that the sense of Eastern Peloponnesus will suit the phrase Ἄργος Ἀχαιïκὸν in all the four passages where it is employed, while the more extended meaning of the whole Peloponnesus is required by none, and could only be even admissible in one (Od. iii. 249), we may conclude that Eastern Peloponnesus is the proper meaning of the phrase.

_Iasian Argos._

We now come to Ἴασον Ἄργος.

In Od. xviii. 245, Eurymachus the Suitor, in paying a compliment to the beauty of Penelope, says to her, you would have more suitors than you have,

εἰ παντές σε ἴδοιεν ἀν’ Ἴασον Ἄργος Ἀχαιοί.

Now it must first be admitted, that this does not refer to any country out of the Peloponnesus. For in the first place, that was the most distinguished part of the country, and the chief Achæan seat; so that the intention of this speech therefore most naturally bears upon it. But also we have nothing in Homer to connect any local use of the word Ἄργος with Middle Greece.

But if Eurymachus means nothing to the North of Peloponnesus, it is again most probable that he refers to that part of Peloponnesus with which Ithaca had most intercourse, where lay its relations of business, and of hospitality. Now this part was Western Peloponnesus, as we see from the journey of Ulysses to Ephyre (Od. i. 260); from the journey of Telemachus which, as it were, spontaneously takes that direction; from the course of public transactions implied in his speech (Od. iii. 82, cf. 72); from the χρεῖος, which Ulysses went to recover in Messene (Od. xxi. 15); from Nestor’s being the person to visit Ithaca in the matter of the great Trojan quarrel; and from the apprehension felt by the party of the Suitors, that Ulysses would forthwith repair to Elis, or to Pylos for aid. (Od. xxiv. 431.)

Just so the relations of Crete were with Eastern Peloponnesus; and therefore Helen at Troy recognises Idomeneus, because she has often seen him in Sparta. And this, I may observe in passing, is probably the reason why Ulysses, in the fictitious accounts which he gives of himself in Ithaca, is so fond of making himself a Cretan, namely that he may avoid any risk of detection, by placing his own proper whereabout at a distance beyond the ordinary range of intercourse.

Nor are we wholly without information from Homer on the subject of the original Iasus himself, from whom the name appears to be derived; and whose name we find still subsisting in Attica at the time of the _Troica_[655].

For a passage in the Eleventh Odyssey informs us that Amphion, son of Iasus[656], was a powerful prince in Minyeian Orchomenus: that his youngest daughter, the beautiful Chloris, was queen of Pylos: and that Neleus, marrying her, founded there the dynasty of the Neleids. Thus through Pylos we connect a powerful Iasid family with Western Peloponnesus, possibly five generations before the Trojan war, and at a time when we find from Homer that the Danaids or Perseus must have been reigning in Eastern Peloponnesus. This seems enough to justify putting the sense of Western Peloponnesus upon the phrase Ἴασον Ἄργος in the speech of Eurymachus.

We may justly inquire whether it is so certain, as seems to be taken for granted, that the Minyeian Orchomenus, where Amphion reigned, was the Orchomenus of Bœotia. For his daughter Chloris was sovereign of Pylos, and we must suppose that sovereignty to have been not acquired by herself, but inherited from her father. Now it is very improbable that Amphion could have been sovereign at the same time of Pylos and of the northern Orchomenos: between which intervened an Æolid family settled at the Isthmus, another race of Hellenic chiefs, the line of Portheus, in Ætolia, and perhaps also the dynasty of Cadmus in Bœotia. We have no instance in Homer of the possession by the same prince of territories not continuous. Now there was there a river Minyeius, between Pylos and Elis; in Arcadia as well as in Bœotia there was an Orchomenos at the period of Homer; it seems then probable, that the name of that town should be combined with the Minyeian name in Peloponnesus as well as in Bœotia. If it were so, the political connection with Pylos is natural, and the application of the Iasian name to Western Peloponnesus becomes still more easy of explication. But even though the Orchomenos here named be Bœotian, the case remains sufficiently clear. For it was once, or formerly (τότε) that Amphion reigned in Orchomenus; and the meaning may well be, that having in earlier life reigned there, he had afterwards accompanied the southward movement of the time, perhaps being expelled from his fat soil; and that he established, or re-established the connection between Western Peloponnesus and the Iasian name.

Lastly, the place μέσον Ἄργος seems to be equivalent to the English expression, ‘through the breadth of Argos,’ or _all over_ Argos; and though we may think that Ἄργος alone means one side of the Peloponnesus, μέσον Ἄργος may very well mean the whole. In the speech of Diomed[657] to Glaucus, it cannot mean less than this: on the other hand, from its being the counterpart of Lycia, it may perhaps not less probably signify the whole of settled Greece, and thus be the equivalent of πᾶν Ἄργος in Il. ii. 108. But the more convenient sense for Od. xv. 80 is plainly the Peloponnesus, because then it squares precisely with Hellas in the same passage, and the two together make up the whole of Greece. But without disturbing the signification of the word Hellas, as meaning Northern and Middle Greece, we might still give to μέσον Argos the force of ‘all Greece.’ The words of Menelaus would then stand as if an inhabitant of London said to his friend a foreigner, ‘I will take you through Scotland and all Britain.’ It is difficult, however, to decide absolutely between these two senses of μέσον Ἄργος. What we see plainly is, that the word Ἄργος had taken the deepest root, and a very wide range, in connection with Greek settlements, and with such settlements only.

And now with respect to the line so much criticised,

ἐγχείῃ δ’ ἐκέκαστο Πανέλληνας καὶ Ἀχαιούς[658].

The word Πανέλληνες may, we have seen, either mean the tribes of Greece beyond the Isthmus, or those of all Greece: in which latter and more likely sense it is coextensive with Ἀχαιοί. I here finally touch upon this verse along with those properly geographical, on account of the important combination which it involves.

_The Apian land._

We find in Il. i. 270, iii. 49, and in Od. vii. 25, xvi. 18, the expression ἀπίη γαίη, which some of the grammarians, and the common opinion mentioned by Strabo[659], have explained to mean the Peloponnesus, while modern scholars render it simply distant[660]. In the two passages of the Iliad, the former construction is certainly more suitable: and the combination with τηλόθεν in Il. i. 270, is tautological, flat, and un-Homeric, if ἀπίη mean merely distant. In Od. xvi. 18 either sense will serve the passage. In Od. vii. 25 (when we again have τηλόθεν) Ulysses states himself to have come ἐξ ἀπίης γαίης. As he had not come from Peloponnesus, it is assumed that this is not the meaning. I question the reasoning. Ulysses everywhere, when questioned, shows an immense fertility in fiction about himself: in every case, however, carefully reporting himself to be come from a distant spot. I see no reason therefore why we should not construe Ἀπίη γαῖα to mean the Peloponnesus; in conformity with the tradition which Æschylus[661] reports concerning Apis, and with the undoubted usage of the tragedians. As I interpret the Outer or Romance-geography of the Odyssey, the Peloponnesus would be understood by the Phæacians of Homer to be extremely remote from their country. The difference of quantity is no sufficient reason against this construction. Plainly Ἀπίη γαίη, if it be a proper name at all, means the whole Peloponnesus, and not a part of it, for Nestor in Il. i. 270 uses it so as to include the Western side, and Hector, Il. iii. 49, so as to include the Eastern.

_Geographical definitions._

I will now sum up the conclusions to which this inquiry has brought us, either by certain or by probable evidence, with respect to Homer’s geographical nomenclature for Greece at large, and for its principal members.

1. Ἀχαïὶς }
Ἀχαïὶς γαῖα } invariably mean the whole of Greece.
Ἀχαιῒς αἶα }

2. Ἄργος either alone, or with epithets other than those which concern geographical extension, means

(1) The city only, as in Il. iv. 52, and probably in Il. ii. 559.

(2) The immediate dominions of Agamemnon in the north and north-east
of Peloponnesus, as in Od. iii. 263.

But it is possible, though by no means certain, that Ἄργος in this
sense should be held to include the whole Pelopid dominions, which
were looked upon as having a certain political unity, and thus to be
the equivalent of Ἄργος Ἀχαιïκόν.

(3) By metonymy from this supreme and metropolitan quarter of Greece,
it means the whole country.

3. The phrase πᾶν Ἄργος in Il. ii. 108 means the whole of Continental Greece.

4. The phrase μέσον Ἄργος means most probably the whole of Greece, or Greece at large; possibly the Peloponnesus only.

5. Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος is Thessaly, from Macedonia to Œta.

6. Ἀχαιïκὸν Ἄργος means the Pelopid dominions of the Troic time, or in general words, Eastern Peloponnesus.

7. Ἴασον Ἄργος means Western Peloponnesus.

8. The word Ἕλλας means

(1) probably a portion of the dominions of Achilles, as in Il. ii.
683, ix. 395;

(2) certainly the country outside them to the southward of Phthia,
down to the Isthmus of Corinth, and probably reaching northward
through the rest of Thessaly: Il. ix. 447 and elsewhere;

(3) it is possible that Ἕλλας may mean all Greece in Od. i. 344, and
xv. 80; but more likely that the sense is the same as in (2).

9. The phrase Ἀπίη γαίη most probably, though not certainly, means the entire Peloponnesus.

What then was this name Ἄργος, which Homer uses so much more frequently, and with so much more elasticity and diversity of sense, than any other territorial name whatever?

In the first place let us remark how rarely it is used for a city; in the strict sense of the word, we cannot be said to find it more than once. Its proper meaning is evidently a tract of country.

From this it is limited to the city to which the tract of country belonged: or it is extended to the country at large, of which the particular tract was the capital or governing part. Both these significations are what are termed improper: the latter is also political, and has no relation to race, or to an eponymist, or to any physical features of soil or scenery, whether the word Ἄργος may have had such reference or not, when used in its original, proper, and usual application, to mean a district.

As previously with populations, let us now set out the various descriptions of source, to which the Homeric names of countries and places owe their origin.

They appear to be derived either

1. From an individual eponymist, as Ithaca from Ithacus, Od. xvii. 207; Dardania from Dardanus, Il. xx. 216; Ascanie from Ascanius, Il. ii. 863; while we see the intermediate stage of the process in the name Ἀπίη, joined with γαῖα, supposed to indicate the Peloponnesus, and to be derived from Apis.

2. From a race in occupation: as in the case of Ἀχαïὶς γαῖα and Ἀχαïὶς simply, from the Achæans; Ἕλλας from the Ἕλλοι; Κρήτη or Κρηταὶ (Od. xiv. 199) from the Κρῆτες.

3. From its physical features or circumstances directly, such as Αἰγίαλος from being a narrow strip along the shore of the Corinthian gulf, between the mountains and the sea: there is also a town Αἰγίαλος of the Paphlagonians, Il. ii. 855. Probably we may add Εὔβοια, Eubœa, from the adaptation of that fertile island to tillage, which afterwards made it the granary of Athens.

4. From some race occupying it: and in the cases where that race has been named from any feature of the country, then, not directly but derivatively, from the country itself.

For instance, Θρῄκη from Θρῇκες, Thracians, which word again must come from a common root with τρᾶχυς. The name Τρηχῖν has obviously a similar origin.

So again in the later Greek we find the old Αἰγίαλος named Αἰγιάλεια from the intermediate formation Αἰγιαλεῖς: and perhaps Ἄργολις from the Ἀργεῖοι, who inhabited it, and took their name from Ἄργος.

And so in Homer we have Φθίη; from that apparently comes Φθῖοι, and from this again, in the later Greek, Phthiotis.

Such then are the ordinary sources, as far as we know, of the territorial names of Homer.

The three aids which we have for judging of the meaning of the name Ἄργος are, the Homeric text, etymology, and the later tradition.

_Etymology of the word Argos._

None of these in any manner connect the name Ἄργος either with an eponymist, or with a race of inhabitants, either mediately or immediately, as its root. We can only therefore look for its origin in something related to the physical features of the country, or countries, to which it was applied.

The word ἄργος itself is frequently found in Homer otherwise than as a proper name. It is used as an adjective in the following combinations:

1. κύνες ἀργοὶ Il. i. 50.

2. βόες ἀργοὶ Il. xxiii. 30.

3. ἀργὴν χῆνα Od. xv. 161.

So also we have the compounds ἀργὴς (κέραυνος) ἀργικέραυνος, ἀργεστὴς (Νότος), ἀργενναὶ (ὀΐες, ὀθόναι), ἀργινόεις (Κάμειρος), ἀργιόδοντες (ὕες), ἀργιπόδες (κύνες), Ποδάργης (horse of Achilles).

And it is usual to give to the word ἀργὸς[662] in these several forms the several senses of

1. Swift, as in swift dogs, swift thunderbolt.

2. White, as in white goose, white (chalky) Cameirus.

3. Sleek, shining, as in sleek oxen, with glistening coats.

It is said truly, that what is swift in motion gives an appearance of shining: and what shines is in some degree akin to whiteness. But it is neither easy to say, in this view of the matter, which is the primary, and which the secondary, meaning of the word, nor what is its etymology. Nor does it show the slightest resemblance to the local name Ἄργος, which, from the variety of its applications, apart from any question of race or political connection, must have had some etymological signification.

Nor, as regards the βόες ἀργοὶ in particular, is it very easy to believe in the sleekness of the oxen in Homer’s time, (this seems to be rather an idea borrowed from the processes and experience of modern times,) or of the camp oxen of any time. Nor is the matter mended by two forced attempts, one to construe βόες ἀργοὶ as oxen having white fat within them, or again, as slow oxen. From these sources, then, we can at present obtain no light.

Now I submit that the just signification of the proper name Ἄργος is to be found by considering it as akin to the word ἔργον, which plainly appears in Homer to have agricultural labours for its primary object. And it seems pretty clear, that by the transposition of letters which so commonly occurs in popular speech, especially during the infant state of languages, the word ἄγρος, ‘a field,’ is no more than a form of Ἄργος.

K. O. Müller, as we have seen, considers that Ἄργος with the ancients means a plain[663]: I would add a plain, not as being a flat surface, but as being formed of cultivable ground, or else it means a settlement formed upon such ground.

In speaking of the word _plain_ as applied to Greece, we use it relatively, not as it would be employed in reference to Russia or Hungary, but as meaning the broader levels between the hills, and commonly towards the sea: such as those valleys of Scotland which are called _carses_, or those called _straths_.

Now in the first place I know no other meaning of the word Ἄργος which will suit its various uses in Homer as Pelasgic Argos, Achaic Argos, Iasian Argos. What is the one common physical feature of the several regions that accounts for the common factor in these three compound expressions, if it be not that of plain, that is to say, cultivable, and cultivated, or settled country?

Again, look at the relation of Ἄργος to Ἀργεῖοι. What except a physical and geographical meaning, still adhering to the word, and holding it somewhat short of the mature and familiar use of a proper name, can account for the fact that we have in the history and geography of Greece so many cases of an Argos, without Argives, that is local or provincial Argives, belonging to it? Achaic Argos indeed has Ἀργεῖοι belonging to it, but Pelasgic and Iasian Argos have none. Just so we might speak of the Highlands of Saxony, or of the Lowlands of Switzerland; but the inhabitants of the first are not known as Highlanders, nor those of the latter as Lowlanders[664].

I believe there are no phrases, which more nearly translate the words Ἄργος and Ἀργεῖοι, than Lowlands and Lowlanders respectively. For the word Lowlands means land not only lying low, but both lying low, and also being favourable for cultivation: and these ideas more truly represent the land fitted for the sort of settlement called Ἄργος, than the mere idea of level plains.

If this be the idea of the word Argos, we see the propriety of its application to the city of Argos and its district. For this city stood, as a city of the town and more open country, in a certain opposition to Mycenæ, which nestled among the hills; and which bore geographically much the same relation to Argos, as Dardania to Ilion. It afterwards fell also into the same political analogy.

In the phrase Ἀχαιïκὸν Ἄργος, Homer deals with a case where, as it is sometimes applied without an epithet, Ἄργος may justly be called a proper name, like the European _Pays-bas_; but there is no evidence of this in his ‘Pelasgic Argos,’ and ‘Iasian Argos,’ and it seems likely that he rather intends in those phrases to employ the term Argos as a word simply descriptive, and to speak of the Pelasgian Lowlands, and the Iasian Lowlands. The difference of sense is just that which we should indicate in English by the absence of the capital letter.

There is evidence that the name had not exhausted its elasticity even after Homer’s time. In later ages we find an Argos of Orestis in Macedonia; an Argos of Amphilochia in Western Greece; an Argos near Larissa in Thessaly[665], and other cases more remote. Nothing but a geographical force still adhering to the word will account for this extension.

The same is the inference to be drawn from the epithets and quasi-epithets, or descriptive phrases, applied to it by Homer. With the exception of one passage, where he gives it the political epithet[666] κλυτὸν, they are all physical; being ἱππόβοτον, πολυδίψιον, πολύπυρον, and οὖθαρ ἀρούρης. Of these four epithets, the first is in Homer peculiarly connected with the specific form and character of the country: accordingly, while it is the standing epithet of Argos, being used with it eleven times out of only fifteen in which the word has any epithet or quasi-epithet attached to it, it is never found with Achæis, or with Hellas. And the proof of its physically descriptive character lies in the passage where Telemachus gives to Menelaus an account of Ithaca;

ἐν δ’ Ἰθάκῃ οὔτ’ ἀρ’ δρόμοι εὔρεες, οὔτε τι λείμων·
αἰγίβοτος, καὶ μᾶλλον ἐπήρατος ἱπποβότοιο[667].

The ἱππόβοτος of Homer, again, does not point merely to fertility, but also to labour and its results; not merely to pasture, but also to grain, for the horses of Homer are fed on this as well as on herbage,

κρῖ λευκὸν ἐρεπτόμενοι καὶ ὀλεύρας[668].

Now, in referring the word Ἄργος to a common root and significancy with ἔργον, we are not bound to hold that it attains its initial vowel by junction with the particle ἀ used in its intensive sense. For we have the word, and also its derivatives, in this form, coming down to us from the old Greek. Among the four tribes of Attica which subsisted until the time of Cleisthenes[669], one was that of the Ἄργαδες or husbandmen: and in the Elian inscription supposed to date about the Fortieth Olympiad[670], or more than 600 years B. C., we have the very word ἔργον in the form ἄργον, with the digamma, in a passage which I copy,

ΑΙΤΕϜΕΠΟΣ ΑΙΤΕϜΑΡΓΟΝ

This inscription, says the Article in the _Museum Criticum_, is of older date than any other which has either been brought in copy from Greece, or is to be found on the marbles. The matter of it is a public treaty, between the Elians and some of their neighbours, concluded for an hundred years.

Another good example of the interchange of the vowels α and ε is in the word ἀρόω, which it is obvious to derive from ἔρα, the earth. In the Latin we see both forms preserved, the one in _aro_ to plough, the other in _sero_ to sow. And this latter suggests the derivation of the Greek σπείρω from a similar source.

If then the meaning of Ἄργος be an agricultural settlement, and its root the same with that of ἔργον, we need not now discuss at large whether that root be the old word ἔρα or terra, which however appears to be probable, and which accounts both for the especial reference of the word ἔργον in Homer to tillage, the oldest industry, and for the subsequent extension of its meaning to labour and its results in general.

_The etymology tested by kindred words._

Now, having this view of the words Ἄργος and ἔργον, we shall find, in the fundamental idea of labour itself, a meaning which will furnish a basis for the Homeric adjective, and for all its compounds in all their varied applications. That idea is always in relation with what is earnest, and (so to speak) strengthful; sometimes this takes the form of keenness, and then comes in the idea of swiftness in conjunction with labour: sometimes, again, it takes the form of patience, and then labour suggests slowness. The labour of a dog is swift, that of an ox is patient: hence the κύνες ἄργοι are laborious dogs, therefore swift; and hence too the βόες ἄργοι are laborious oxen, therefore slow; the office of the one being to cover space, and of the other to overcome resistance. We may bring the two senses near without any loss in either case, by calling the oxen sturdy or sedulous, and the dogs strenuous or keen.

The third sense of whiteness legitimately attaches to the effect of rapid motion upon the eye.

The sense of sleekness does not appear to be required in Homer: but it may be a derivative from that of whiteness.

By one or more of the three first senses, or by the original sense of labour in its (so to speak) integral idea, all the Homeric words may be justly rendered. Some of them will bear either the sense of swift, or that of white: for instance, ἀργὴς with κεραυνός. In Aristotle[671], de Mundo, c. 4, we have τῶν κεραυνῶν ... οἱ ταχέως διάττοντες, ἀργῆτες λέγονται. And again, ἀργεστὴς with Νότος. This may mean the fleet Notus: it may also mean white, as carrying the light white cloud from over the sea, in the sense taken by Horace, who appears to have been an accurate and careful observer of Homeric epithets; and who says,

Albus ut obscuro deterget nubila cœlo
Sæpe Notus[672].

This sense of the word Argos will suit other uses of it which have not been yet named.

For instance, it will suit the ship Argo, which we may consider as swift, or, and perhaps preferably, as stout, strong, doing battle with the waves: as we now say, a good ship, or a gallant ship. Again, it suits the noble dog Argus of the Odyssey, whose character would be but inadequately represented by either patient, swift, or white. Considering this word as the adjective of the word which describes what has been well called by a writer of the present day, “noble, fruitful labour,” we at once see him before us, swift as he had been, and patient as he was, but also brave, faithful, trustful, and trustworthy. Argus the spy, named in the Ἀργειφόντης of Homer, represents one side of the early meaning of the word[673]. The adjective ἀργαλέος, exaggerating as well as isolating that element of difficulty which the root comprises, represents another: and the later word ἀργοῦντες[674], the idle, catching the idea of slowness at the point where it passes into inertness, similarly represents yet another.

Such being the case in regard to the name Ἄργος, we shall now have an easy task in dealing with Ἀργεῖοι.

Homer employs this word in four places (to speak in round numbers) for three in which he uses Δαναοί.

He employs it as an epithet, sometimes with the name of Juno, and frequently with the name of Helen.

_The Danaan Argives of Od. viii. 578._

In the Odyssey[675] we have this singular and rare juxtaposition of the words:

Ἀργείων Δαναῶν ἠδ’ Ἰλίου οἶτον ἀκούων.

Nitzsch[676] observes, that we might almost suppose the word Ἀργείων to be an epithet, and this observation is quoted by G. Crusius. Eustathius, the Scholiast, Barnes, Payne Knight, do not notice it. It seems to me more agreeable to Homeric laws to treat Ἀργείων as the substantive, and Δαναῶν as the adjective. For as Homer knows of an Achaic, an Iasian, a Pelasgic Argos, so he may consistently speak of Danaan Argives, with the latent idea that there might be, and were, other Lowlanders out of Greece. But there were not, so far as we know, any other Danaans than a single Greek dynasty.

Homer also in other places uses Δαναοὶ[677] as an adjective, with the substantives ἥρωες and αἰχμηταί. He has no corresponding use of Ἀργεῖοι: thus the old idea of a _colonus_ or farming settler seems still to colour the word, and lingers in it, even after it has grown to be in common use a proper name.

In the application of the word Ἀργείη as an epithet to Juno and Helen, he appears not to mean simply Greek but Argive Juno, Argive Helen, so that the word here is not properly the singular of Ἀργεῖοι the national name, but simply the adjective formed from Ἄργος, in the sense of that part of Peloponnesus which formed the Pelopid dominions. To these Helen belonged: and for that family, as previously for the Perseid race, Juno felt her chief anxiety, evidently because they were the political heads of Greece.

Thus the use of Argeian as an adjective seems to be quite clearly limited to a local sense of the word: and this being the case, it seems remarkable that the attention of the commentators before Nitzsch should not have been directed to the line in the Eighth Odyssey, and that Nitzsch, with ἥρωες Δαναοὶ and αἰχμηταὶ Δαναοὶ to guide him, should suggest the sense of Argive Danaans, instead of Danaan Argives.

The local use, however, of the Argeian name must not be dismissed without a more full investigation. Let us first dispose of its use for Juno and Helen.

The proof that Helen is meant to be described as not merely Greek, but as connected with Achaic Argos or Eastern Peloponnesus, has already been sufficiently[678] set forth.

As respects Juno, we shall find that her affections always centre in the house that was paramount in the chief seat of Hellenic power, the Eastern Peloponnesus. Her tenacious attachments are constantly directed to the nation, and they survive dynastic changes. Hence her keen and venturesome feeling for Eurystheus; her never dying, never sleeping hatred to his rival Hercules; her esteem for Agamemnon equally with Achilles[679], though they were so unequal in fame and valour: perhaps suggesting that Achilles was regarded by her either because he was necessary for the purposes of Agamemnon, or because he was closely allied to the chief Achæan stock[680]. Hence it is that, when he has assumed his arms[681], she thunders in his honour: and hence her especial love for the three cities, which were the symbols of Greek power, Argos, Sparta, and Mycenæ[682]. So intense is her attachment, that she could wish to be the actual mother of the Greeks, even as she would readily devour the Trojans upon occasion[683]. Hence, once more, even in the Odyssey, where she is almost a mute, it is mentioned, that Agamemnon[684] came safe across the sea, for Juno protected him. This is quite enough to fix the sense of Ἀργείη, when it is applied to Juno, as a local sense.

In fact, Homer’s use of this word with a restrained and local sense is not only clear, but most carefully defined, both as to time and as to place.

While in the army before Troy he freely interchanges Danaan, Argive, and Achæan, as they are near enough to identity for his purpose, he never applies Danaan at all to the Greeks at home, and employs the other two names with the most accurate discrimination.

_Transition from Argeians to Achæans._

The Argeian name is confined in place to the Eastern Peloponnesus, and in time to the Perseid epoch. Upon the transfer of the sovereignty to the Pelopid house, the Argeian name ceases to be applied to their immediate subjects. Let us now examine passages which may illustrate the case.

1. Two or nearly three generations before the _Troica_, in the time when Bellerophon was young, Prœtus ruled over the Ἀργεῖοι,

πολὺ φέρτερος ἦεν
Ἀργείων· Ζεὺς γὰρ οἱ ὑπὸ σκηπτρῷ ἐδάμασσεν[685].

Now Prœtus was certainly not lord of Greece. There was no lord paramount of Greece before the Pelopids: and near the time of Prœtus we have Eurystheus, Œneus and his line, Cadmus and his line, Neleus and his line, Minos and his line, as well as probably other thrones, each in its own place. But Prœtus falls within the period of the Perseids, and within the local circumscription of the Eastern Peloponnesus where they reigned.

2. But neither is Eurystheus spoken of by Homer as sovereign of Greece; though he is king of the Argives[686],

ὃς Ἀργείοισιν ἀνάξει.

For when Juno fraudulently asks and obtains from Jupiter the promise that the person to be born that day shall enjoy a certain sovereignty, it is not over the Argives, but over the περικτίονες:

ἦ μὲν τὸν πάντεσσι περικτιόνεσσιν ἀνάξειν
ὅς κεν ἐπ’ ἤματι τῷδε πέσῃ μετὰ ποσσὶ γυναικός.

Thus the promise is the babe shall reign over περικτίονες, a word clearly inapplicable to the whole of that straggling territory, which was occupied irregularly by the Greeks. But when the fulfilment is claimed, it is that he shall reign over Ἀργεῖοι. Therefore the two names are coextensive, and accordingly Ἀργεῖοι does not mean all Greeks; for example, it does not include the line of Cadmus then ruling in Bœotia.

3. But we come down to the time of Tydeus, who was lord of Argos during the epoch of the Pelopid sovereigns. And now we find that his subjects cease to be called Ἀργεῖοι (see Il. v. 803. iv. 384) in the legends, where Homer observes a peculiar nicety in the application of these important words.

_Local sense of the former name retained._

4. Still the Argeian name continues to preserve its local application to the inhabitants of Argos and its district, or of Achaic Argos.

At the games on the death of Patroclus, Idomeneus thinks he discerns Diomed coming in as the winner, and he describes him thus:

δοκέει δέ μοι ἔμμεναι ἀνὴρ
Αἴτωλος γενέην, μετὰ δ’ Ἀργείοισιν ἀνάσσει[687].

It is plain that here Idomeneus means among Argives, and not among Greeks.

1. Because not Diomed was lord among the Greeks, but Agamemnon.

2. Because Diomed was lord over a part of the Argives.

3. Because the word is used in evident contradistinction to, and correspondence with, the foregoing word Αἴτωλος, which is undoubtedly local.

Again, when we are told that Orestes made a funeral feast for the Ἀργεῖοι[688], we may probably presume that we have here again the local sense.

Thus we see plainly enough the history of the rise of the Argive name. Belonging to the subjects of the ruling part of Greece, it grows so as to be applicable to all Greeks, in cases where no confusion can arise from its being thus employed. Thus the Roman name became applicable to Campanians or Calabrians as subjects of Rome, in contradistinction to Germans, Dacians, or Parthians; but if the subject in hand were domestic and Italian, the domestic distinction would naturally revive. Even so Homer’s Greeks are all Argeians in the _Troica_: but at home they have their local meaning, like Cadmeans, Ætolians, Pylians, Elians, Epeans, Arcadians, Locrians, and also, as we shall find, Achæans.

It is at the very period of the local prevalence of the Argive name, that we find also from Homer unequivocal appearances of a Cretan empire, circumscribing it by sea, and possibly more or less by land, though perhaps the Minoan power and dynasty may not at once have acquired its Grecian character. If then, with respect to the word Ἀργεῖοι, we see that it was originally of limited and local application; we have no reason whatever to suppose that the Danaan name could ever have been of wider scope. Two questions then arise.

First, why does Homer use the Danaan and Argive names as national, when they were only local?

Secondly, the priority of the Danaan name being clear, as we see that the Danaan dynasty preceded that one whose subjects were called Argives, why did the Argive name supplant or succeed the Danaan?

The first question will be resumed hereafter, but I will now touch upon the second.

The name Danaan, in all likelihood, was that of a dynasty originating beyond seas; and if so, it could not well, until softened by the mellow haze of distance, be more popular with the Greeks, when they had awakened under Hellic influence to a full consciousness of national life, than it would have been with the English in the last century to be called Hanoverians or Brunswickers.

The Danaid line ceased, when Perseus came to the throne, as he was descended on the father’s side from another source.

Nothing could be more natural, than that with this change of dynasty an old and merely dynastic name should disappear. But why should it be succeeded by the name Ἀργεῖοι?

_Relation of Argeian and Pelasgian names._

I hope it will not be thought too bold, if, founding myself on the probable, perhaps I might say, plain resemblance of meaning between Πελασγοὶ and Ἀργεῖοι, I conjecture that on the disappearance from use of the name Δαναοὶ, instead of falling back upon the old agricultural name Πελασγοὶ, which had by a Danaan conquest become that of a subordinate, if not servile class, the people may have come to bear the name Ἀργεῖοι; borrowed, like the other, from the region they inhabited, and from their habits of life in it, and of equal force, but without the taint which attached to the designation of a depressed race.

In this view, the name Ἀργεῖοι may be defined to be the Hellic equivalent of the old Pelasgic appellation of the people of the country: and it naturally takes root upon the passing away of the Danaan power, within the dominions of those to whom that power had been transferred.

I shall hereafter have occasion to consider further, what was the first historic use of the Argeian name.

There are signs in the later Greek of the affinity, which I have here supposed, between the Pelasgian and Argeian names, and of the assumption of the functions of the former by the latter. I do not enter on the question of etymological identity, but I refer to similarity of application alone.

_Illustrations of the Etymology._

In Suidas we find the proverb Ἀργείους ὁρᾷς, with this explanation; παροιμία ἐπὶ τῶν ἀτενῶς καὶ καταπληκτικῶς ὁρώντων. Now we know nothing of the Argives, that is, the inhabitants of Argolis, which would warrant the supposition that they were of particularly savage and wild appearance. But if Ἀργεῖοι, as has been shown, originally meant settlers in an agricultural district, and if in process of time the population gathered into towns, in lieu of their old manner of living κωμηδὸν, then, in consequence of the change, Ἀργεῖοι would come to mean rustics, as opposed to townspeople, and from this the transition would be slight and easy to the sense of a wild and savage aspect, as in the proverb.

Let us compare with it the Latin word _agrestis_. This I take to be precisely similar, indeed identical, etymologically, with Ἀργεῖος. The point of divergence is when Ἄργος by transposition becomes ἀγρὸς, whence are _ager_ and _agrestis_. Materially this Latin word is in still closer correspondence with ἀργηστὴς, a Greek derivative of ἄργος. Ideally, it passes through the very same process as has been shown in the case of Ἀργεῖος, and here it is strongly supported by the common Homeric word ἄγριος, rude or savage, which comes from ἄγρος, made ready by transposition to yield such a derivative.

This name we find not only as an adjective, but likewise as a proper name. It is applied to a brother of Œneus and Melas, a son of Portheus[689]: and in these names we appear to see described the first rude Hellic invaders of Ætolia, at an epoch three generations before the _Troica_. The _agrestis_, or agricultural settler, next comes to mean the class of country folk, as opposed to the inhabitants of towns or _urbani_; and then, while _urbanus_, with its Greek correlative ἀστεῖος, passes on to acquire the meaning of cultivated and polished, _agrestis_, on the other hand, following a parallel movement with Ἀργεῖος, and in the opposite direction, comes to mean uneducated, coarse, wild, barbarous. Thus Ovid says of the river Achelous, when he had been mutilated by the loss of his horn in the combat with Hercules,

Vultus Achelous agrestes
Et lacerum cornu mediis caput abdidit undis[690].

Thus Cicero, in the Tusculans, after a description of the battles of the Spartan youths, carried on not only with fists and feet, but with nails and teeth, asks, _Quæ barbaria India (~al.~ barbaries Indica) vastior atque agrestior?_

We also find in Suidas the phrase Ἀργεῖοι φῶρες, and this explanation: Ἐπὶ τῶν προδήλως πονηρῶν· οἱ γὰρ Ἀργεῖοι ἐπὶ κλοπῇ κωμῳδοῦνται. Ἀριστοφάνης Ἀναγύρῳ.

No part of this play remains, so that we are left to general reasoning: but it seems a most natural explanation of this proverb or phrase, that the word Ἀργεῖος, meaning wild and savage, should be applied to banditti: theft in the early stages of society, always frequenting solitary places, as in the later ones, it rather draws to the most crowded haunts of men.

Again, Æschines, in the Περὶ Παραπρεσβείας, brings the grossest personal charges against Demosthenes, for offences, which he says had brought upon him various nicknames. Among these, he thus accuses him: Ἐκ παιδῶν δὲ ἀπαλλαττόμενος, καὶ δεκαταλάντους δίκας ἑκαστῷ τῶν ἐπιτρόπων λαγχάνων, Ἄργας ἐκλήθη. This passage is noticed by both Suidas and Hesychius under Ἀργὰς, and it is explained ὄνομα ὀφέως. A serpent, either generally or of some particular kind, had, it seems, the name of Ἀργὰς, which we can easily derive from ἄργος, taken in the same sense as that in which it became the name of Argus the spy. ‘Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field[691].’ But this does not seem to satisfy the intention of the highly vituperative passage in Æschines. This imputation of extreme cleverness or craft would not have been perhaps a very effective one in Greece. I think he more probably means to call Demosthenes a swindler or plunderer, _homo trium literarum_, from whom his guardians were trying to recover, and who was likely to be exposed, not like the serpent, to get off: and in this sense the word Ἀργὰς at once attaches itself to the reported passage in Aristophanes, and through that to the old meaning of _agrestis_ or Ἀργεῖος. Nor is Ἀργεῖος, a thief, more remote in sense from Ἀργεῖος, a rural settler, than is _paganus_, an idolater, from _paganus_, a villager.

I will take yet one more illustration, Hesychius under Ἀργεῖοι gives this explanation; ἐκ τῶν Εἱλώτων οἱ πιστευόμενοι οὕτως ἐλέγοντο, ἢ λαμπροί. Now the sense of λαμπροὶ might easily be derived from the primitive sense, in the same way as that of whiteness. But it is quite distinct from the explanation respecting that select and trusted class of Helots, who were called Ἀργεῖοι. This usage both serves to explain history, and is explained by it. Ἀργεῖοι was the name of the Greek citizen in Eastern Peloponnesus under the Perseids; it appears in part to have retained its local force throughout the period of the Pelopids; for though in the legend of Tydeus the inhabitants of Argolis we at least find the name Ἀχαιοὶ among them, yet in the Twenty-third Iliad, and in the Third Odyssey, they are called Ἀργεῖοι. In the local usage, then, the Helot meaning a serf, the emancipated Helot would be a citizen, an Ἀργεῖος. But neither serfship nor citizenship were in those days rigidly defined, and the one ran into the other. What could under such circumstances be more natural, than that any Helot who was separated from his brethren, by being taken into the confidence of his master, and living on easy terms with him, should acquire the name of Ἀργεῖος, and, that the class who had thus obtained it in a somewhat peculiar sense, that is to say, the sense of a free rural settler, or (so to speak) freeholder, should continue to bear it as descriptive of their own position, even when it had ceased to be generally applicable to the free Greeks of that particular district? which of course it could no longer be when the family and dynastic tie between Argolis and Lacedæmon came to be dissolved.

And if I am right in supposing that even in Homer[692] the name Ἀργεῖοι evidently leans towards the masses, and that of Ἀχαιοὶ towards the select few or chiefs, such a distinction is in marked harmony with the whole of this inquiry respecting the force of the former phrase.

_Different extent of Ἀργεῖοι and Ἄργος._