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[152] Ἐφύρη was a common cityname; three or four different towns are called by it in H. (see M. and R. on Od. 1.259). According to the tradition it is here applied to Corinth; Ar. remarks that H. uses the later “Κόρινθος” in his own person (2.570, 13.664) but gives the older “Ἐφύρη” to his characters. But it is probable that the identification is merely due to the localization of the Bellerophon myth at Corinth, which is fully established for Pindar (O. xiii.). Certainly the description “μυχῶι Ἄργεος” hardly suits that town; it should properly mean a city ‘in a nook of Argos,’ among the hills surrounding an Argive plain; and so it is used in Od. 3.263 of Mykenai with complete accuracy. It can be applied to Corinth only by taking “Ἄργος” in the widest sense, ‘in a corner of Peloponnesos’; cf. 2.287, 3.75, etc., and Pind. N. vi. 27 “μυχῶι Ἑλλάδος ἁπάσης” (where, however, see Fennell). But then this will hardly suit 224 “Ἄργεϊ μέσσωι”, where the word is used in the narrower sense. It seems necessary to conclude that the home of the myth was originally in some forgotten Ephyre among the hills of “Argos,” and was only later transferred to Corinth. Furthermore, it is open to question whether this Argos was not the Thessalian Argos, rather than the Peloponnesian. It is noteworthy in this connexion that according to Strabo (ix. 442) the “Ἔφυροι” of 13.301 were the ancient inhabitants of the Thessalian Krannon, which sufficiently suits the description, being on the edge of the plain of Larissa (the “Pelasgian Argos”) and near the Enipeus (see note on 154 below). The Ephyre of 2.659 and the Od. lay in W. Greece — Thesprotia or Elis — and is not in question here; see on 11.740.

The Iliad, edited, with apparatus criticus, prolegomena, notes, and appendices. Walter Leaf. London. Macmillan. 1900.

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