and,
“in the farthest part of Argos is a city Ephyra;”[192]
and,
“the middle of Argos;”[193]
and,
“to rule over many islands, and the whole of Argos.”[194]
Argos, among modern writers, denotes a plain, but not once in Homer. It seems rather a Macedonian and Thessalian use of the word.
10. After the descendants of Danaus had succeeded to the sovereignty at Argos, and the Amythaonidæ, who came from Pisatis and Triphylia, were intermixed with them by marriages, it is not surprising that, being allied to one another, they at first divided the country into two kingdoms, in such a manner that the two cities, the intended capitals, Argos and Mycenæ, were not distant from each other more than 50 stadia, and that the Heræum at Mycenæ should be a temple common to both. In this temple were the statues the workmanship of Polycletus. In display of art they surpassed all others, but in magnitude and cost they were inferior to those of Pheidias.
At first Argos was the most powerful of the two cities. Afterwards Mycenæ received a great increase of inhabitants in consequence of the migration thither of the Pelopidæ. For when everything had fallen under the power of the sons of Atreus, Agamemnon, the elder, assumed the sovereign authority, and by good fortune and valour annexed to his possessions a large tract of country. He also added the Laconian to the Mycenæan district.[195] Menelaus had Laconia, and Agamemnon Mycenæ, and the country as far as Corinth, and Sicyon, and the territory which was then said to be the country of Iones and Ægialians, and afterwards of Achæi.