previous next
[9]

The acropolis of the Argives is said to have been founded by Danaüs, who is reputed to have surpassed so much those who reigned in this region before him that, according to Euripides,“"throughout Greece he laid down a law that all people hitherto named Pelasgians should be called Danaans."
12 Moreover, his tomb is in the center of the marketplace of the Argives; and it is called Palinthus. And I think that it was the fame of this city that prepared the way, not only for the Pelasgians and the Danaans, as well as the Argives, to be named after it, but also for the rest of the Greeks; and so, too, the more recent writers speak of "Iasidae," "Iasian Argos," "Apia," and "Apidones"; but Homer does not mention the "Apidones," though he uses the word "apia,"3 rather of a "distant" land. To prove that by Argos the poet means the Peloponnesus, we can add the following examples: “"Argive Helen,"
4and “"There is a city Ephyra in the inmost part of Argos,"
5and “"mid Argos,"
6and “"and that over many islands and all Argos he should be lord."
7And in the more recent writers the plain, too, is called Argos, but not once in Homer. Yet they think that this is more especially a Macedonian or Thessalian usage.

1 Eur. Fr. 228.7 (Nauck)

2 Cp.5. 2. 4.

3 Hom. Il. 1.270, quoted by Strabo in 1. 1. 16

4 Hom. Od. 4.296

5 Hom. Il. 6.152

6 Hom. Od. 1.344

7 Hom. Il. 2.108

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus English (H.C. Hamilton, Esq., W. Falconer, M.A., 1903)
load focus Greek (1877)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide References (2 total)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: