2. Or it may mean the whole of Greece, by transfer from its capital part, and then the line must be interpreted in the second mode, as might now be said, ‘to our Green Erin, our Ireland mother of the brave.’
The English ‘and’ would indeed mar the sense: but the Greek καὶ is much more elastic, and may be equivalent to the Italian ossia, or to the sign =.
I doubt if there be any passage in Homer where the word Argos stands alone, or with a characteristic epithet such as ἱππόβοτον, and where it requires any other sense than one of the three just given—the city—the north east of Peloponnesus—and (by metonymy) all Greece.
When Nestor (Il. ii. 348) denounces those Greeks who should think of returning home before the mind of Jupiter is known, and calls returning Ἄργοσδε ἰέναι, it seems indisputable that we must construe Ἄργος Greece.
When Paris says he brought the κτήματα from Argos, the most natural construction is, as the place was Sparta, and therefore not Argos in the narrow sense, from which he took them, that he means by Argos to signify Greece.
When Sisyphus dwells at Ephyre, μυχῷ Ἄργεος ἱπποβότοιο, the word means the north eastern district Peloponnesus[650].
The word Ἄργος in the Catalogue (ii. 559) most probably means the city only.
As it is plain that in some passages it cannot mean the Peloponnesus, and as that meaning does not appear to be supported by superior probability in any place, such a meaning ought not to be admitted.
Achaic and Iasian Argos.
It is another question how we ought to construe the phrases μέσον Ἄργος—Ἀχαιïκὸν Ἄργος, used four times—and Ἴασον Ἄργος.