The two latter are evidently analogous to Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος, which we have already found to mean Thessaly.
Of the four passages where we read the phrase Ἀχαιïκὸν Ἄργος, the two first[651] relate to the return of Agamemnon and the Greeks, and appear to admit therefore either of the limited sense of a portion of Peloponnesus as the most eminent part, or of the extended one of all Greece, better than of the intermediate one of Peloponnesus itself, with which neither Agamemnon, nor the whole body of the Greeks, had any separate and defined relation, as they had with the dominions of Agamemnon in the capacity of their supreme Chief, and perhaps with those of the Pelopid family jointly, so as to include Menelaus.
In the third case it is used of Juno, as she goes to hasten the birth of Eurystheus[652],
καρπαλίμως δ’ ἵκετ’ Ἄργος Ἀχαιïκὸν, ἔνθ’ ἄρα ᾔδη
ἰφθίμην ἄλοχον Σθενέλου Περσηïάδαο.
This passage evidently admits the sense of the city, or a limited district, better than that of the Peloponnesus at large. Indeed, as the seat of the Perseid dominion is evidently intended, and as that dominion did not reach over all Peloponnesus, we may say that this could not be the meaning of the words.
But the fourth passage requires a larger signification for this phrase. It is the question of Telemachus, asking where Menelaus had been during all the time that Ægisthus was about his crime[653];
ποῦ Μενέλαος ἔην;
ἢ οὐκ Ἄργεος ἦεν Ἀχαιïκοῦ, ἀλλὰ πῇ ἄλλῃ
πλάζετ’ ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπους;
This seems clearly to include Sparta in Achaic Argos; and, this being so, no meaning is so suitable to it in this place as Eastern Peloponnesus. This construction is also eminently suitable to the relation between Eastern Peloponnesus and the Achæan power, which had its central seat there.
Undoubtedly Strabo treats Ἀχαιïκὸν Ἄργος as meaning the whole of Peloponnesus (viii. 5. p. 365, ibid. 6. p. 369), but the argument from Homer’s text seems to be against him: and even he admits from Od. iii. 249, that the term applied also to Laconia in particular: ἀλλὰ καὶ ἰδίως τὴν Λακωνικὴν οὕτω προσαγορευθῆναι[654].