meaning Penelope, she then would have a greater number of suitors; for it is not probable that he means those from the whole of Greece, but those from the neighbourhood of Ithaca. He applies also to Argos terms common to other places,
“pasturing horses,” and “abounding with horses.”
6. There is a controversy about the names Hellas and Hellenes. Thucydides[180] says that Homer nowhere mentions Barbarians, because the Greeks were not distinguished by any single name, which expressed its opposite. Apollodorus also says, that the inhabitants of Thessaly alone were called Hellenes, and alleges this verse of the poet,
“they were called Myrmidones, and Hellenes;”[181]
but Hesiod, and Archilochus, in their time knew that they were all called Hellenes, and Panhellenes: the former calls them by this name in speaking of the Prœtides, and says that Panhellenes were their suitors; the latter, where he says
“that the calamities of the Panhellenes centred in Thasus.”
But others oppose to this, that Homer does mention Barbarians, when he says of the Carians, that they spoke a barbarous language, and that all the Hellenes were comprised in the term Hellas;
“of the man, whose fame spread throughout Hellas and Argos.”[182]
“but if you wish to turn aside and pass through Greece and the midst of Argos.”[183]
7. The greater part of the city of the Argives is situated in a plain. It has a citadel called Larisa, a hill moderately fortified, and upon it a temple of Jupiter. Near it flows the Inachus, a torrent river; its source is in Lyrceium [the Arcadian mountain near Cynuria]. We have said before that the fabulous stories about its sources are the inventions of poets; it is a fiction also that Argos is without water--
“but the gods made Argos a land without water.”
Now the ground consists of hollows, it is intersected by rivers, and is full of marshes and lakes; the city also has a copious supply of water from many wells, which rises near the surface.
They attribute the mistake to this verse,
“and I shall return disgraced to Argos (πολυδίψιον) the very thirsty.”[184]
or without the δ for πολυίψιον, equivalent to the expression πολύφθορον in Sophocles,
“this house of the Pelopidæ abounding in slaughter,”[185]