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].