Chapter 17

ἔνθ’ αὖτ’ ἀγγελίην ἐπὶ Τύῃ στεῖλαν Ἀχαιοί.

An allusion to this occurrence is again put into the mouth of Minerva in Il. v. 800-7. The resemblance in the names used is so precise as to be almostprecisian. Again, the Mycenians are named once, and named asἈχαιοί. Again, the Thebans are named twice, and once it is asΚαδμεῖοι, once asΚαδμείωνες.

Proofs of the distinctive use.

These two instances fortify one another to such a degree by their concurrence, that, as I would submit, they would, even if they stood alone, amount to a demonstration that Homer had regard to the times and circumstances under which the several races prevailed, in those passages of his work which refer to particular incidents of prior history, personal and local. But there is no lack of other evidence.

First, we have other pieces of prior history, which affect the same portion of Greece. The first of these probably preceded theTroicaby only two, or, at the utmost, two and a half generations. It is the account of the birth of Eurystheus, given by Agamemnon himself in the Nineteenth Book. The scene of it is described asἌργος Ἀχαιïκόν. He calls it indeed by the name, which it still bore at the time when he spoke, and which was understood by the hearers, for it remained the same country as it had been in former times. But the same people, who in the time of Tydeus, living under the Pelopids, wereἈχαιοὶ, in the time of Eurystheus, and therefore before the predominance of the Pelopids, are described asἈργεῖοι. InIl. xix. 122, Juno thus speaks of the birth of Eurystheus

ἤδη ἀνὴρ γέγον’ ἐσθλὸς, ὃς Ἀργείοισιν ἀνάξει.

And again, v. 124, the same term is used.

Again, it appears from the Sixth Iliad that Prœtus, who expelled Bellerophon about the same time, was king of theἈργεῖοι(Il. vi. 158);

ὅς ῥ’ ἐκ δήμου ἔλασσεν, ἐπεὶ πολὺ φέρτερος ἦενἈργείων.

According to extra-Homeric tradition, Prœtus was the brother of Eurystheus. According to Homer, his power extends over Ephyre, and over the Argives: and as Æolid dynasties were then ruling in the west, it is the country afterwards called the Argos of the Achæans, within some part of which he must have ruled. But in telling both the story of Prœtus, and the story of Eurystheus, with reference to the same side of Peloponnesus, and entirely out of connection with one another, the text of Homer, true to itself, calls the subjects of each at that period, only by the nameἈργεῖοι, neverΔαναοὶorἈχαιοί.

Thus, one generation before theTroicahe calls people Achæans, and calls them by that name only, whom one or two generations earlier he describes, and repeatedly and uniformly describes, as having been Argives. There can hardly be stronger circumstantial evidence of the fact, that to each term he attached its own special meaning.

And yet it is not simply that Homer has made the Argive the more ancient, and the Achæan the more recent, name. On the contrary, he uses both the one and the other with marked respect to place as well as to time. For at the great Argive epoch he has Achæans: and at the great Achæan epoch, that of thepoems, he has Argive associations, and a local Argive designation, still remaining.

In the Eleventh Book, Nestor detains Patroclus with a speech of great length. In the beginning of this harangue, he refers to the circumstances of the moment, and, having ended his preface, he travels back to his own early youth, indeed almost his childhood, to give the story of a war, or foray, between the Epeans and the Pylians. When he has ended this tale, he returns to the actual position of affairs before Troy.

In the narrative of this raid[616], he commonly terms the one side Epeans, and the other Pylians. But he once calls the Epeans, who were inhabitants of Elis, Elians. This is natural enough: for as the Elian name afterwards (and so soon as in the time of Homer) prevailed in that race and country, it might very well have been already beginning to come into use. But he also calls the Pylians Achæans; and he uses the name distinctively, for it is where he is speaking of them as the conquering party[617]. For this there is clearly no corresponding reason. It is equally clear that Homer does not call the PyliansἈχαιοὶ, simply in the sense of being Greeks, for then the name would not have been distinctive: the enemy too would have been included with them, which would turn the passage into nonsense. Homer, then, (there is no other alternative) means to say that the Pylians were, in some particular sense, of the Achæan race.

This is the more worthy of remark, when we look to the preamble and peroration of the speech. For in both of these, which refer to the whole body of the Greeks and to the Trojan epoch, he employs his usual names, and calls them both Danaans (Δαναῶν οὐ κήδεται,v. 665, also vid. 797), and Argives (Ἀργείων ἀέκητι, v. 667): finally Achæans (υἷες Ἀχαιῶν, 800).

Thus then he calls the Pylians Achæans at the time of the Argive predominance: for this local war could hardly have been more than ten or twenty years after the birth of Eurystheus, and must therefore have been before, or else during his reign; that is to say, at a time when his own subjects are calledἈργεῖοι.

Again. Homer uses the wordἈργεῖοςin the feminine singular fifteen times. Twice it is with reference to Juno. Of course this application of the term is figurative. But though it be figurative, the figure is evidently founded on her close and intimate relation, not to the Greeks at large only, but to the Argive name; and to the persons, but more particularly to the place, that was so specially associated with it[618].

In all the other thirteen places, the epithet is joined with the name of Helen. Does it for her mean simply Greek, or something special and beyond this? Now if it meant simply Greek, it would be strange that she is never called, I will not sayΔαναὴ, because the Danaan name has no singular use in Homer, but certainlyἈχαιὴorἈχαίïς. Especially as the wordἈχαιὸςis used as an epithet, be it remembered, many times oftener, than isἈργεῖος: and it alone is used to describe the women of Greece generally.

Again, if the epithet Argive, as applied to Helen, meant simply Greek, it might be suitable enough in the mouth of a Trojan speaking among Trojans, but it would have been weak and unmeaning, and therefore most unlike Homer, in the mouth of a Greek or a friend of Greeks; or when, as in the Odyssey[619], Helen is no longer among strangers, but at home. Yet it is usedin the following passages among others, (1) by Juno to Minerva, Il. ii. 161, (2) by Minerva to Ulysses, Il. ii. 177; and here in a near juxtaposition with the Achæan appellative, which goes far to prove of itself thatἈργείηhas a meaning more specific than merely Greek. The passage is,

Ἀργείην Ἑλένην, ἧς εἵνεκα πολλοὶ Ἀχαιῶνἐν Τροίῃ ἀπόλοντο.

I doubt whether Homer ever places in such proximity the two epithets with the same meaning for each[620]. The tautology would be gross, if Achæan and Argeian each meant neither more nor less than Greek: but ifἈργείηhave the local sense, nothing awkward remains. (3) It is used by Agamemnon, Il. iii. 458, in addressing the Trojans; (4) Il. iv. 174, in addressing Menelaus; (5) Il. ix. 140, in addressing the Greek Council. It seems quite clear, from even this enumeration, thatἈργείη, as applied to Helen, must mean something different from the mere fact that she belonged to the Greek nation at large.

Nor is it difficult to find a meaning. Homer indeed leaves us but narrow information as to the extraction of Helen. He calls her sometimesεὐπατέρεια[621], and many timesΔιὸς ἐκγεγαυῖα[622]. In the Third Iliad he shows her to be the sister of Castor and Pollux, and in the Eleventh Odyssey he shows them to be the children of Tyndareus and Leda[623]. Who Tyndareus was we do not know from him. But the common tradition, which makes him a sovereign in Eastern Peloponnesus, is thoroughly accordant with the slight notices in Homer. For, as we see from the cases of Eurystheus and Prœtus, it was in Eastern Peloponnesus that the Argivepower and name prevailed; and Helen, the daughter of Tyndareus is, as we have also seen, characteristically with him the Argive Helen. Thus then it may now be lawful to say, we are supplied with a meaning for the name which makes it especially appropriate in the mouth of Agamemnon, the head of the Pelopids. For they were the race who, coming in at the head of the Achæans, had from the West overpowered and superseded the Argive power of the East, while they also held as heirs to it by marriage: and if a royal Argive house at the epoch of the war survived only in Helen and her sister Clytemnestra, she in part at least represented its title, and, as a lawful wife of Menelaus, added to his throne whatever authority the name and rights of her race were capable of conferring.

Having, I trust, seen enough to justify the belief that some at least of these names in the mind of Homer had a definite as well as a more general meaning, let us now, taking them in succession, proceed to examine what that meaning is.

The Danaans of Homer.

Among the three great Homeric appellatives, let us direct our attention first to the one, which is presumably the oldest. The wordΔαναοὶ, from the comparative paucity of the signs and indications connected with it, evidently answers to this description.

We will take first the Homeric, and then the later, evidence respecting it. Of the former, the greater number of particulars are negative. Indeed we have but two positive notes to dwell upon; both of these, however, are of great importance.

1. The Danaan name is with Homer a standing appellation of the Greeks. I think, however, it can be shown that it never means the Greek nation, but always the Greek armament or soldiery.

It is used in the Iliad one hundred and forty-seven times. The nameἈργεῖοιis employed oftener, namely, one hundred and seventy-seven times in the plural, besides eleven times in the singular as a personal epithet: andἈχαιοὶmuch more frequently still.

His epithets for the three designations.

If we observe the shadings, attached to these words respectively by means of the epithets which Homer annexes to them, we shall find they establish perceptible distinctions.

The epithets ofΔαναοὶare exclusively military epithets:

1.ἥρωες.2.θεράποντες Ἄρηος.3.φιλοπτόλεμοι.4.αἰχμηταί.5.ἀσπισταί.6.ἴφθιμοι.7.ταχύπωλοι.

The epithets ofἈργεῖοιare as follows:

1.ἰόμωροι, Il. iv. 242. xiv. 479.2.ἀπειλάων ἀκόρητοι, Il. xiv. 479.3.θωρηκτοί, Il. xxi. 429.4.φιλοπτόλεμοι, Il. xix. 269.5.ἐλεγχέες, Il. iv. 242.

Upon these we may observe, first, that they are few in number; secondly, that they are used with extreme rarity; being only applied in four passages altogether, whereas the wordΔαναοὶhas epithets in twenty-two. Thirdly, this word only twice in the whole of the poems has a military epithet attached to it. For I must follow those, who do not translateἰόμωροιas corresponding withἐγχεσίμωροι: (1) because the Greeks were not archers, (2) because the derivation fromἴα, ‘the voice,’ giving the sense of braggart, harmonises exactly with the accompanying phraseἀπειλάων ἀκόρητοι: as well as (3) for the presumptive, but in Homerby no means conclusive, reason, thatἴονin composition is long.

The epithets ofἈχαιοὶare numerous, highly varied, and of very frequent use. They are these:

1.ἀπειλητῆρες.2.μάχης ἀκόρητοι.3.ἀνάλκιδες.4.δῖοι.5.ἑλικῶπες.6.εὐκνήμιδες.7.ἥρωες.8.καρηκομόωντες.9.μεγάθυμοι.10.μένεα πνείοντες.11.χαλκοκνήμιδες.12.χαλκοχίτωνες.13.ὑπερκύδαντες.14.ἀρηίφιλοι.15.φιλοπτόλεμοι.

These epithets are used in nearly one hundred and thirty passages, and they may be classified as comprising,

(1) One or two words of sarcastic reproach, very rarely used.(2) Words descriptive of courage and spirit: such areμεγάθυμοι, μένεα πνείοντες.(3) Words indicating that disposition to brag, which is more or less traceable in the military conduct of the Greeks, as well as glaringly palpable among the Trojans.(4) Words descriptive of personal beauty:ἑλικῶπεςandκαρηκομόωντες.(5) The wordδῖοι, which signifies generally the possession of some kind of excellence.(6) Words relating to well made and well finished armour:εὐκνήμιδες, χαλκοκνήμιδες, χαλκοχίτωνες.

(1) One or two words of sarcastic reproach, very rarely used.

(2) Words descriptive of courage and spirit: such areμεγάθυμοι, μένεα πνείοντες.

(3) Words indicating that disposition to brag, which is more or less traceable in the military conduct of the Greeks, as well as glaringly palpable among the Trojans.

(4) Words descriptive of personal beauty:ἑλικῶπεςandκαρηκομόωντες.

(5) The wordδῖοι, which signifies generally the possession of some kind of excellence.

(6) Words relating to well made and well finished armour:εὐκνήμιδες, χαλκοκνήμιδες, χαλκοχίτωνες.

And of the epithets of the three appellatives respectively we may say,

(1) Those ofἈχαιοὶare highly diversified, extended, and elevated in meaning: and are not suitable for soldiers exclusively.(2) Those ofἈργεῖοιare so slight and rare that they may be passed over.(3) Those ofΔαναοὶare most properly neither those of chiefs, nor of a nation at large, but of a soldiery.

(1) Those ofἈχαιοὶare highly diversified, extended, and elevated in meaning: and are not suitable for soldiers exclusively.

(2) Those ofἈργεῖοιare so slight and rare that they may be passed over.

(3) Those ofΔαναοὶare most properly neither those of chiefs, nor of a nation at large, but of a soldiery.

In the Odyssey the Danaan name is used thirteen times: but it never signifies either the Greeks contemporary with the action of that poem, or the Greek nation in its prior history: it is employed always retrospectively, and always of the soldiery in the Trojan war.

It will be observed by readers of the poems, that Homer often brings two of the three great appellatives, or even all the three, into juxtaposition so near, as would be inconvenient upon the supposition that they are purely synonymous. For instance, in Il. i. 71, we haveἈργεῖοιandἈχαιοὶin the same line, and in Il. i. 90, 91,ΔαναοὶandἈχαιοὶin two successive lines. It is, I think, obvious, that this inconvenience will be mitigated or removed, if it can be shown that each of these three names, though they were most commonly applied to mean the same body of persons, nevertheless had its own shade of meaning. And we shall presently have to examine cases, where a determination of this kind appears to be required by the sense[624].

All the rest of the Homeric evidence connected with the nameΔαναοὶis of a negative character.

It is never used in the singular number, either as an adjective, or as a substantive. Nor is it ever applied to women: a point not immaterial, in connection with the question, whether with Homer it does not mean the Greeks of the army exclusively. There is, again, nothing in his use of it which associates it with a particular class of the army, either the lower or the higher; but it appears to be essentially general, comprehensive, and, I may add, likewise invariable in its meaning.

Still less should we expect to find it, nor do we find it, connected with the inhabitants of any particular part of the country: it has not, like the Cadmean or Cephallenian name, a local habitation within Greece. Nor has it in itself any root, or any derivative, which would associate it with any territory, asΑἰγιαλεῖςrefers us toΑἰγίαλος, or even asἌρκαδεςis related toἈρκαδίη.

Its use in the Iliad is in exact harmony with that in the Odyssey: it is never associated with the history of the Greeks or any part of them: in short, there is no clear evidence of its existence or application beyond the limits of the camp.

Neither has it any thing related to the physical character of the country, or to any of the races known to have inhabited it, or to any employment or habit of life, or to any deity. It floats before us like Delos on the Ægean, without any visible or discoverable root. And the only question is, whether the slight positive evidence at our command is not so limited, and so hemmed in on all sides by negatives, as to determine the hypothesis that may be drawn from it to one particular form, by forbidding us to move, except in one particular direction.

It is quite plain that the Danaan name must have had some root, lying very deep in the history or legends of Greece: since it would not have been possible for Homer, as a poet of the people, handling a subject the most profoundly national, to describe the Greek army under any name, except one associated with some of the most splendid, or the most venerable, traditions of the country.

Danaan name dynastic.

In one way alone could this name fulfil the required condition. If its root was not territorial, nor tribal, nor religious, it could only be personal. Was there, then, a Danaus known to the early history of Greece, who founded a dynasty in its centre of power, at a period anterior to the Hellenic history of the country, so as not to be in competition with the honours of that race? If so, then it is intelligible that the Greeks might be calledΔαναοὶby Homer. If that dynasty had passed away, we can well understand whyΔαναοὶshould not be a name of contemporary Greeks as such: just asΚαδμεῖοιwas not an admissible designation for contemporary Bœotians. Further, if it had never been an historical appellative at all, but was the mere reflection cast by the figure of a great primitive personage, and incorporated, for the Poet’s purpose, in a designation made national by him, then we can see how natural it was, that he should limit the word altogether to an heroic and martial sense; just as Cambrian for Welshman, or Caledonian for Scotchman, or Gael for Highlander, or son of Albion for Englishman, would be an appellation naturally appropriated to romance, or war, or any strain impregnated with a strong vein of imagery or passion, but yet would not be suitable for the purposes of pure history.

In this inquiry concerning the Danaan name, we must, I think, carry along with us, as a cardinal element in the case, that which we know from other sources respecting the manner in which Homer was wont to veil all traces of the entry from elsewhere of races, persons, or influences into Greece. It must never be forgotten, that, throughout the whole of the poems, there is apparently not one single statement, made to us with the intention of conveying information respecting the colonization of Greece from abroad. It seems to bethe Poet’s intention that we should assume all Greek manners, institutions, and races, to have sprung out of the very soil: and it is only accidentally that he imparts to us any information or suggestion on this subject, when he is in quest of some other purpose, and unawares lets fall a gleam of light upon some foreign settlement or immigration.

All this is conformable to the course of natural feeling. Shakespeare found it worth his while to sing of Lear, but not of Hengist and Horsa; of the English in France, not of the Normans in England. And though Danish invasions have not robbed our great Alfred of his fame, yet for a long time, in order to guard its brilliancy, it may have been that we coloured in our own favour the military history of the period. Arrivals from abroad, in the early periods of the life of a nation, are usually the conquests, in one form or another, of foreigners over natives: of what is strange to the soil over what is associated with it. It can hardly be, that such narratives should be popular. An abnormal instance to the contrary may be found in the fable, which deduced the Julian line in Rome from Æneas: but this was for poetry composed a thousand years after the date of its narrative; composed when the line of national continuity with those, whom Æneas was taken to have conquered, had been completely broken; and composed for the ears of a court, when the pulse of national life had become almost insensible. Even the process, by which Hellenes mastered Pelasgians, is nowhere professedly related by Homer; whose purpose it was to unite more closely the elements of the nation, and not to record that they had once been separate.

Compared with the Cadmean.

Except in the one point, that the nameΚαδμεῖοιhad had a clear and undeniable place in prior history, thereis a marked analogy between the modes in which Homer treats the Cadmean and the Danaan stories. In each of the two cases, general tradition tells us of a foreigner, who enters Greece and founds a dynasty. This dynasty, after acting powerfully on the destinies of the country for some generations, in the course of time disappears, the name dying with it. All this, in the first of the two instances, we have seen to be sufficiently supported by inference and suggestion from Homer. Yet Homer never mentions Cadmus, except as it were by chance, in the act of giving the extraction of Leucothee[625]; nor states that he came from abroad; nor that he founded a dynasty at all. He gives us Cadmus, father of Leucothee, and Cadmeans, and lets us make of them what we can. So here he gives us Danaans, and not indeed a Danaus, but a Danae, who is presumably related to Danaus.

2. In Iliad xiv., Jupiter renders an account of his passion for various women, all of them persons in the very highest positions; and among these for Danae[626].

Δανάης καλλισφύρου Ἀκρισιώνης,ἣ τέκε Περσῆα, πάντων ἀριδείκετον ἀνδρῶν.

The line of Danae.

In this passage we have Danae exhibited as the head of a line of sovereigns through Perseus, who occupied the most ancient and most distinguished seat of power in Greece, that of the Eastern Peloponnesus. From her, indeed, the derivation of sovereignty is locally continuous down to the time of Homer. Perseus is the father of Sthenelus[627], and Sthenelus of Eurystheus. Next to him, we find Pelops in possession of the throne, with a new sceptre, betokening a new sovereignty. That is to say, he was no longer a merely local sovereign, whose highest honour it was to be first in that class,primusinter pares; but he had also acquired an extensive supremacy, reaching beyond his own borders, or those of the Achaic Argos, and embracing all Greece, with a multitude of islands[628].

Such is the line of Danae downwards: beginning with a son, whose paternal extraction we shall consider hereafter[629]. And her epoch, as we shall see, is six generations before the Trojan war. For tracing her upwards, we have no means from Homer, except such as are afforded by the wordἈκρισιώνη. The use of a patronymic which describes Danae as the daughter (most probably) of Acrisius, in some degree makes it likely that Acrisius either was the brother of Danaus, or otherwise collaterally related, rather than directly descended from him. For, had Danae herself been descended from Danaus, it seems improbable that she would have drawn her patronymic from the less distinguished Acrisius, unless Danaus was a very remote ancestor. But this is very improbable: for seven generations before Troy form the utmost limit of Homer’s historical knowledge; and where all besides falls within that line, it is improbable that there should be a single exception reaching greatly beyond it. And again, from the course of migration, it is likely that we should find his oldest traditions in Asia, and not in Europe. On the other hand, that Homer should stop short in tracing the lineage onwards, just before he came to the foreign immigrant, is in exact conformity with what he has done in omitting to connect Œdipus and Epicaste[630]with Cadmus, or Pelops with Tantalus. In the former of these two cases, the omission all the more cogently suggests design, because Epicaste is the only woman introduced in theΝεκυΐαwithout mention of her husband, among all those, eight in number, of whose caseshe gives us the detail. It is most probable, therefore, that Homer meant the genealogy to stand as follows: and at the least, it must not be thought that the text of Homer gives countenance either directly or indirectly to those later fables, which throw back the first Greek dynasties into a very remote antiquity.

1. Danaus = Acrisius|2. Danae3. Perseus4. Sthenelus5. Eurystheus (= Hercules) = Pelops6. Atreus = Thyestes7. Agamemnon = Ægisthus.

Epoch of the dynasty.

According to these presumptions, Danaus is contemporary with Dardanus[631]: and also is just such a person as Homer’s poetic use of the nameΔαναοὶwould lead us to expect; one who came from abroad, and is on that account kept in majestic shadow; one who founded a throne, but did not introduce a race: one who may have given his people the name ofΔαναοὶ, as Cadmus gave that ofΚαδμεῖοι, for the time while his dynasty was in power, but whose name disappeared, together with its sway. We have, it will be remembered in Homer, no Homeric legends of the period of the Danaids, so that we do not know whether the nameΔαναοὶwas then in any degree national or not.

According to the post-Homeric tradition, Danaus was an Egyptian[632], brother of Ægyptus. He migrated into Greece, and became king of Argos. Acrisius and Prœtus were reputed to be his great-grandsons.

In Homer, too, we have an Acrisius and a Prœtus: but Prœtus is contemporary with Bellerophon, two generations before theTroica, so that he is later by four generations than Acrisius, and later by at least four than Danaus.

The more recent tradition, contradicting Homer positively in this, as in so many instances, carries Prœtus back to the time of Acrisius, and then, paying some respect to the interval between Prœtus and Danaus, gives compensation by thrusting Danaus himself three generations further back.

Of the posterity of the Homeric Prœtus we hear nothing, and with him the Danaid line, prolonged in a junior branch, may have expired. Tradition places him on the throne of Tiryns. His holding a separate sovereignty in Argolis is not of itself in conflict with the Homeric account of the Perseids, who reigned at Mycenæ; because we find in Argos itself a separate sovereignty under Diomed at the epoch of theTroica. But the terms used are peculiar. Prœtus ruled overἈργεῖοι;

πολὺ φέρτερος ἦενἈργείων· Ζεὺς γάρ οἱ ὑπὸ σκηπτρῷ ἐδάμασσεν[633].

The account of Eurystheus in the Nineteenth Book may, however, imply that he was king of all theἈργεῖοι: and at first sight there is some conflict here, because both Eurystheus and Prœtus may be said to date two generations before theTroica. The solution is probably as follows. The passion of Antea, wife of Prœtus, for Bellerophon, suggests that her husband was more advanced in life than Bellerophon, whom, as the grandfather of Glaucus, we may take as justly representing in time the second generation before the war. On the other hand, as Eurystheus was the contemporary ofHercules, and Hercules had a son, as well as grandsons in the war, we may assume Eurystheus to have been junior to the generation, as Prœtus was its senior; so that they need not have been contemporary princes.

The historic place assigned to Danaus, either as we might fix it from Homer, or as the later tradition would determine it, keeps him clear of the earliest Hellic traditions in southern Greece. None of these can well be carried back beyond Sisyphus; and Sisyphus stands at five generations before the war, while Danaus cannot be less than seven. Had Homer made Danaus synchronise with the earlier Hellic sovereignties, it would have been, in my view, a presumption against his Egyptian origin, or his existence altogether. For an Egyptian stranger was little likely to attain to power, where Hellenes were already in the field: the more energetic genius would subdue the less vigorous. The expulsion of the Hellenic Bellerophon, and the plot against his life, may really have been connected with the political jealousies of the Danaids towards the formidable new-comers of the Æolid stem: nor do I read the fable of Jupiter with Danae otherwise than as a veil, used to give dignity to the commencement of an Hellic sovereignty, which, in the person of Perseus, partly succeeded, partly supplanted, the Danaid throne.

Danaus has been mentioned by Hesiod, the first among the later authorities. This poet states, that he relieved Argos from drought: an operation which harmonises well with the tradition that brings him from a country dependent on the irrigation of the Nile, as the conditions of cultivation there could not but lead at an early date to care in the management of water. He likewise calls Perseus by the name ofΔαναίδης, and also terms him the son of Danae[634].

The only point of connection between the Danaids and the Argive or Argeian name is, that Prœtus, the last of the Danaids, reigns over Argeians. But this is at a period when the Perseid house, which was evidently Hellenic, has already become the first in rank among the Greek thrones, and has given, as is probable, the Argeian name to the people of Eastern Peloponnesus. The whole evidence, therefore, throws the Danaan name, with all its incidents, back to a period anterior to that of Argeians and of Achæans.

But if the Danai were thus before theἈργεῖοιand before theἈχαιοὶ, whom did they follow?

Post-Homeric tradition.

The evidence of Æschylus in the Supplices supports the tradition which makes them immediately follow the Pelasgi[635], or which, more strictly, represents their name as the first of those borne by the Greek nation after it had ceased to be simply Pelasgic.

By Euripides was conveyed a kindred tradition, that Danaus, having come to Argos, colonized the city of Inachus; and that the Peloponnesians, previously called Pelasgiotes, were thereafter called Danai[636].

Πελασγιῶτας δ’ ὠνομασμένους, τὸ πρὶνΔαναοὺς καλεῖσθαι νόμον ἔθηκ’ ἀν’ Ἑλλάδα.

These traditions, received through the tragedians, coincide with the evidence of the Homeric text. For this text, in the first place, clearly throws the Danaan line farther back than that of any of the Hellic tribes. Secondly, by negative evidence, no where employing the Danaan name in the pre-Troic legends, he leaves us to infer that it must have been the oldest, and the most remote from common use, of his three great appellations. Thirdly, Homer supplies us with no other name which there isthe smallest ground for inserting between the Danaans and the ancient Pelasgi, of whom we have found traces, direct and indirect, in so many places of the poems.

Thus, then, although we can plead little but conjecture from Homer with respect to the person Danaus, we seem to be justified in concluding from his testimony, that the appellation was dynastic, that the dynasty was pre-Hellenic, and that it stands in chronological order next to the Pelasgic time.

The nameἈργεῖοιis the next with which we have to deal: and this name, applicable to persons, is so evidently founded on the nameἌργος, applicable to territory, that with this latter word we must of necessity begin the investigation; just as in order to arrive at the meaning of the term Hellenes, we were obliged to begin with Hellas.

Applications of the name Argos.

And the wordἌργοςis so important, and as it were central, in the geography of Homer, that we had better first consider what are the various forms of expression which Homer uses when he wants to express in words the entire territory of the Greek nation:

1. We have already seen that he appears to use for this purpose the combined force of the names Hellas and Argos;

ἀνδρὸς, τοῦ κλέος εὐρὺ καθ’ Ἑλλάδα καὶ μέσον Ἄργος[637].

2. He employs other combinations for the like purpose. The first is that ofἌργος, extended by the epithetπᾶν, and joined with the islands. These words taken together embrace the whole Empire of Agamemnon:

πολλῇσιν νήσοισι, καὶ Ἄργει παντὶ ἀνάσσειν[638].

3. And again, with the proper nameἈχαïὶς,

Ἄργος ἐς ἱππόβοτον, καὶ Ἀχαïίδα καλλιγύναικα[639].

This is spoken by the Trojan herald of the possible adjustment of the quarrel, upon which, he says, we shall dwell quietly in Troy, andtheywill return to Argos and Achæis. By “they” he means all the Greeks, therefore the country to which they return means all Greece.

4. It may be a question whetherἌργος, in combination withμέσος, includes the whole of Greece, as in the speech of Diomed to Glaucus:

τῷ νῦν σοι μὲν ἐγὼ ξεῖνος φίλος Ἄργεï μέσσῳεἰμὶ, σὺ δ’ ἐν Λυκίῃ[640].

5. It is also a question, what is the geographical force of Argos, even when standing alone. It is manifestly wide in certain passages. Thus Paris mentions theκτήματα,

ὅσσ’ ἀγόμην ἐξ Ἄργεος ἡμέτερον δῶ[641]:

and Polydamas, speaking of the possible destruction of the Greek army,

νωνύμνους ἀπολέσθαι ἀπ’ Ἄργεος ἐνθάδ’ Ἀχαιούς[642].

a line repeated elsewhere. On the other hand, the word in some places has undoubtedly a limited meaning only.

6. Again, we find the wordἈχαίïς γαῖα, used apparently with the intention of signifying the whole Greek country; as in the first Iliad by Nestor;

ὦ πόποι, ἢ μέγα πένθος Ἀχαίïδα γαῖα ἱκάνει[643].

7. And we have the same wordἈχαίïςwithoutγαῖα, both in the Iliad and the Odyssey.

For instance, when Nestor and Ulysses were collecting the Greek forces, they were

λαὸν ἀγείροντες κατ’ Ἀχαίïδα πουλυβότειραν[644].

And Ulysses, addressing his mother in the Shades beneath, says,

οὐ γάρ πω σχέδον ἦλθον Ἀχαίïδος, οὐδέ πω ἀμῆςγῆς ἐπέβην[645].

To proceed first with what is most clear, I think it may be taken for certain thatἈχαίïς, with or without the affixγαῖαorαἶα[646], means nothing less than the whole of Greece in the passages where Homer uses this appellative alone. One passage, indeed, taken alone, affords decisive proof for itself that even the islands are included. Telemachus[647]thus describes his mother as unrivalled in Greece:

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