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[246] Ἴασον Ἄργος, a phrase which only occurs here, must denote the whole of the Peloponnesus, if not all the Greece of the time (cp. 15. 80). It is one of the old geographical names that survive in poetical tradition, sometimes after their original application is forgotten. It is quoted by Curtius E. as a proof of the wide diffusion of Ionian settlements in the earliest period of Greek history. He combines it with the statement of Pausanias (ii. 37, 3) that before the Dorian invasion the people of Argos spoke the same dialect as the Athenians (Curtius, Die Ionier, p. 3). On the other hand it is difficult to understand why the Peloponnese should be called ‘Ionian’ when it was mainly occupied by an Achaean population. And the formation of the word “Ἴασος”, in the sense of “Ἰαόνιος” (or “Ἰόνιος”), is not according to any obvious analogy.

Homer's Odyssey. W. Walter Merry. James Riddell. D. B. Monro. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1886-1901.

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    • Pausanias, Description of Greece, 2.37.3
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