To proceed first with what is most clear, I think it may be taken for certain that Ἀχαίïς, with or without the affix γαῖα or αἶα[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:
οἵη νῦν οὐκ ἔστι γύνη κατ’ Ἀχαίïδα γαῖαν
οὔτε Πύλου ἱερῆς, οὔτ’ Ἄργεος, οὔτε Μυκήνης,
οὔτ’ αὐτῆς Ἰθάκης, οὔτ’ ἠπείροιο μελαίνης.
For here are clearly enumerated as among the parts of Ἀχαίïς, several Peloponnesian states, the island of Ithaca, and the continent, evidently meaning that to the North of the Corinthian gulf.
And yet it may remain true that, though commonly meaning Greece at large, Ἀχαίïς may still have a more special connection with the South, as the whole of this island is called Britain, whereas the name has been derived especially from its southern inhabitants.
But in the passages numbered (1) and (3) we find the whole of Greece designated by the use, not of one, but of two expressions: in the first case they are,
1. Ἕλλας.
2. μέσον Ἄργος.
In the second they are,
1. Ἄργος.
2. Ἀχαίïς.
And with these we may compare the expression, evidently meant to cover all the Greeks, in Il. ii. 530, under the names
1. Πανέλληνες.
2. Ἀχαιοί.