But we find Ἕλλας in another combination besides that with Phthia, in the four passages of the Odyssey, (one of them being a simple repetition of another,) which we have still to examine.
Now the line Od. iv. 726, repeated 816, is under suspicion, of which it is not worth while to scrutinise the justice: as the idea and force of it is just the same with that of Od. i. 344,
Ἀνδρὸς, τοῦ κλέος εὐρὺ καθ’ Ἑλλάδα καὶ μέσον Ἄργος.
This passage describes the fame of Ulysses as spread through the breadth of Hellas and mid-Argos; (or, from the heart of Argos to its extremities, right through or all over Argos.) And again in Od. xv. 80, when Telemachus has proposed to return home forthwith from the court of Menelaus, his host gently dissuades him from haste, and counsels a more extended tour, καθ’ Ἑλλάδα καὶ μέσον Ἄργος; offering to take charge of his horses, and to shew him ‘the cities,’ or secured dwellings, ‘of men.’
The signification of the word Ἄργος will be considered hereafter: for the present purpose it is enough to observe that the word μέσον, as used by Menelaus, in combination with Hellas, of itself prevents our applying it simply to the narrow corner of the Peloponnesus in which the city of Argos was placed; and therefore that it can scarcely mean less than Peloponnesus. And it is not less plain, that whatever may be the force of the words when taken singly, their effect when taken together can hardly be less than this: Menelaus must mean to point to Greece at large, as the scene of the proposed excursion. For there is no assignable portion of Greece to which, consistently with the words and the sense, he can be held to confine his meaning. If we could suppose him to mean Peloponnesus only by the two names Hellas and Argos, which he employs in this place, we should but enlarge thereby the Homeric capacity of the word Hellas; for we have already brought it down from the north to Bœotia; and we should, in the way now proposed, carry it through the isthmus, and over Peloponnesus, or, at the least, over some part of it. But even if Menelaus means Peloponnesus only, which is most improbable, it is plainly incredible that such should be the meaning of Penelope in Od. i. 344. As a Greek, she cannot mean to limit the renown of her husband to any sphere less wide than Greece.
We have already seen, that Hellas sometimes includes certainly the territory from Southern Thessaly to Bœotia, and probably Thessaly at large: and it is quite plain that, if it comes to Bœotia, it does not stop there, but applies to the whole of Middle Greece, the region between Thessaly and the isthmus: for the application of the term Hellas could not stop except at some great natural division of the country, and the isthmus is here the only one possible.
Now the name Argos is related to Thessaly[500], but much more specially related to the Peloponnesus, as we shall see from a number of passages. It has no relation at all in Homer to that division of the country in particular which we call Middle Greece.
Assuming it, then, to mean Peloponnesus, in that case Hellas means Middle with Northern Greece: and the two names of Hellas and Argos, taken together, completely and conveniently express the whole country. The only alterations are such as would assign to Hellas a larger sense; in no case can it, as to this passage, admit of a more restricted one.
The foregoing argument is supported to a certain extent by the fact, that while territorial names are frequent for the Peloponnesian part of Greece, (we have Achaic Argos, Iasian Argos, Elis, Arcadia, Lacedæmon,) the continent to the north of the isthmus is generally without territorial names: Phthia and Pelasgic Argos are, I think, the only exceptions. There is thus before us a gap, which the name Hellas, as it has been here construed, seems conveniently to fill.
This construction of certain passages, in which the word Hellas is contained, is not one which should be adopted by the reader unawares. But if, like myself, after examining into it strictly he assents to its justice and necessity, then he will find that it is of the utmost importance to the elucidation of Homeric history; for it supplies a key to other much contested uses of the Hellenic name.