From this it is limited to the city to which the tract of country belonged: or it is extended to the country at large, of which the particular tract was the capital or governing part. Both these significations are what are termed improper: the latter is also political, and has no relation to race, or to an eponymist, or to any physical features of soil or scenery, whether the word Ἄργος may have had such reference or not, when used in its original, proper, and usual application, to mean a district.
As previously with populations, let us now set out the various descriptions of source, to which the Homeric names of countries and places owe their origin.
They appear to be derived either
1. From an individual eponymist, as Ithaca from Ithacus, Od. xvii. 207; Dardania from Dardanus, Il. xx. 216; Ascanie from Ascanius, Il. ii. 863; while we see the intermediate stage of the process in the name Ἀπίη, joined with γαῖα, supposed to indicate the Peloponnesus, and to be derived from Apis.
2. From a race in occupation: as in the case of Ἀχαïὶς γαῖα and Ἀχαïὶς simply, from the Achæans; Ἕλλας from the Ἕλλοι; Κρήτη or Κρηταὶ (Od. xiv. 199) from the Κρῆτες.
3. From its physical features or circumstances directly, such as Αἰγίαλος from being a narrow strip along the shore of the Corinthian gulf, between the mountains and the sea: there is also a town Αἰγίαλος of the Paphlagonians, Il. ii. 855. Probably we may add Εὔβοια, Eubœa, from the adaptation of that fertile island to tillage, which afterwards made it the granary of Athens.
4. From some race occupying it: and in the cases where that race has been named from any feature of the country, then, not directly but derivatively, from the country itself.
For instance, Θρῄκη from Θρῇκες, Thracians, which word again must come from a common root with τρᾶχυς. The name Τρηχῖν has obviously a similar origin.
So again in the later Greek we find the old Αἰγίαλος named Αἰγιάλεια from the intermediate formation Αἰγιαλεῖς: and perhaps Ἄργολις from the Ἀργεῖοι, who inhabited it, and took their name from Ἄργος.
And so in Homer we have Φθίη; from that apparently comes Φθῖοι, and from this again, in the later Greek, Phthiotis.