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._
According to the view which has been here given, we must carefully
distinguish between the sense of Ἀργεῖοι, as a national name in Homer,
and that of Ἄργος, in this respect. The name Ἀργεῖοι was raised to
the distinction of a national name apparently in consequence of
the political ascendancy of a house that reigned over territories
specially named Ἄργος, and over subjects named from the region Ἀργεῖοι.
I say this without undertaking to determine whether there actually
was a period in which the Greeks were as a nation called Ἀργεῖοι, a
supposition which seems to me improbable: or whether it was a name
which Homer applied to them poetically, like the name Δαναοὶ, because
it had once been the proper designation of those who held the seat
of Greek supremacy. In either view, however, the case of the name
Ἄργος is different. That name had not its root in political power,
actual or remembered: it kept its place, as being founded in a good
physical description, so far as it went, of the general character of
the principal habitable parts of the peninsula which the Hellic tribes,
swarming downwards from their hills, successively and gradually
occupied. Hence the substantive was, as we see, capable of spreading
beyond the adjective in space, since, while we have an Iasian and a
Pelasgian Ἄργος, we have no Iasian or Pelasgian Ἀργεῖοι. Thus they were
detached one from the other. In Homer the epithet has a larger range
of clear signification than the substantive. But apart from Homer the
substantive appears from etymology to have been the older, and from
history either to have reached points at which the adjective never
arrived, or to have long survived its desuetude.
_The Achæans._
_Particulars of the use of the Achæan name._
The lights, which we have already obtained in considering the Danaan
and Argive names, will assist the inquiry with respect to the Achæans.
At the same time, the fullest view of that name and race cannot be
attained, until we shall have succeeded in fixing what we are to
understand by the Homeric ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν.
I now proceed, however, to show from the text of the poems,
1. That of the three great appellatives of the nation, the name Ἀχαιοὶ
is the most familiar.
2. That the manner of its national use indicates the political
predominance of an Achæan race, in the Homeric age, over other races,
ranged by its side in the Troic enterprise, and composing along with it
the nation, which owned Agamemnon for its head.
3. That, besides its national use, the name Ἀχαιοὶ has also an
important local and particular use for a race which had spread through
Greece, and which exercised sway among its population.
4. That the manner of its local and particular use points out to
us, with considerable clearness, the epoch at which it acquired
preponderance, namely that when Pelops and his family acquired
ascendancy in Greece.
As respects the first of these propositions, the numerical test,
although a rude one, yet appears to be conclusive. We find that Homer
uses the name Ἀργεῖοι in the plural two hundred and five times, of
which twenty-eight are in the Odyssey; besides fifteen passages in
which the singular is used. And the name Δαναοὶ about one hundred and
sixty times, of which thirteen are in the Odyssey. But we find the name
Ἀχαιοὶ, employed from seven to eight hundred times: that is to say,
five hundred and ninety-seven times in the Iliad, and one hundred and
seventeen times in the Odyssey; all these in the plural number, besides
thirty-two places of the poems in which it is used in the singular, or
in its derivatives Ἀχαίïς or Ἀχαιïκός.
The particulars next to be stated will bear at once upon the first and
upon the second proposition.
Homer very rarely attaches any epithet to the name Ἀργεῖοι, more
frequently by much to Δαναοὶ, and still oftener to Ἀχαιοί. To the first
only six times in all: to the second twenty-four: and to the third near
one hundred and forty times. It is not likely that metrical convenience
is the cause of this diversity. We have already seen that Ἀργεῖοι is
susceptible of a substantive force, which will carry one at least of
the other names by way of epithet, as if it indicated an employment,
and not properly the name of a race. A like inference may be drawn from
the greater susceptibility of carrying descriptive epithets, which we
now find the Danaan and Achæan names evince. For example, the name of
the Scotts, Douglasses, or Grahams, four centuries ago, would have
afforded larger scope for characteristic epithets than such a name as
Farmers or Colonists, when used to point out a particular people, or
than such a name as Lowlanders, while it still retained its descriptive
character, and had not yet become purely titular or proper. We must
probably look, then, to political significance for the basis of the use
made by Homer of the Achæan name.
When we examine the character of the epithets, this presumption is
greatly corroborated. Homer uses with the word Ἀχαιοὶ, and with this
word only, epithets indicating, firstly, high spirit, secondly,
personal beauty, and thirdly, finished armour[693]. I take these to be
of themselves sufficient signs, even were others wanting, to point to
the Achæans as being properly the ruling class, or aristocracy, of the
heroic age.
The Achæan name, again, attains with Homer to a greater variety of use
and inflexion than the Danaan or Argeian names.
He has worked it into the female forms Ἀχαιΐδες, Ἀχαιïάδες, Ἀχαιαὶ, as
on the other side he has done with the names Τρῶες into Τρωὲς, Τρωάδες,
and Τρωαὶ, and Δάρδανοι into Δαρδανίδες: but he has not made any such
use of the names Ἀργεῖοι and Δαναοί. The female use of the former
appears indeed in the singular with the names of Juno and of Helen,
but never as applicable to Greek women in general, or to a Greek woman
simply as such.