Another river of the same name flows out of Arcadia to the coast near Buras. There is another Erasinus also in Eretria, and one in Attica near Brauron.
Near Lerna a fountain is shown, called Amymone. The lake Lerna, the haunt of the Hydra, according to the fable, belongs to the Argive and Messenian districts. The expiatory purifications performed at this place by persons guilty of crimes gave rise to the proverb, “A Lerna of evils.”
It is allowed that, although the city itself lies in a spot where there are no running streams of water, there is an abundance of wells, which are attributed to the Danaïdes as their invention; hence the line,
“the Danaïdes made waterless Argos, Argos the watered.”
Four of the wells are esteemed sacred, and held in peculiar veneration. Hence they occasioned a want of water, while they supplied it abundantly.
9. Danaus is said to have built the citadel of the Argives. He seems to have possessed so much more power than the former rulers of the country, that, according to Euripides,
“he made a law that those who were formerly called Pelasgiotæ, should be called Danai throughout Greece.”
His tomb, called Palinthus, is in the middle of the market-place of the Argives. I suppose that the celebrity of this city was the reason of all the Greeks having the name of Pelasgiotæ, and Danai, as well as Argives.
Modern writers speak of Iasidæ, and Argos Iasum, and Apia, and Apidones. Homer does not mention Apidones, and uses the word apia only to express distance. That he means Peloponnesus by Argos we may conclude from these lines,
“Argive Helen;”[191]