Now, in referring the word Ἄργος to a common root and significancy with ἔργον, we are not bound to hold that it attains its initial vowel by junction with the particle ἀ used in its intensive sense. For we have the word, and also its derivatives, in this form, coming down to us from the old Greek. Among the four tribes of Attica which subsisted until the time of Cleisthenes[669], one was that of the Ἄργαδες or husbandmen: and in the Elian inscription supposed to date about the Fortieth Olympiad[670], or more than 600 years B. C., we have the very word ἔργον in the form ἄργον, with the digamma, in a passage which I copy,
ΑΙΤΕϜΕΠΟΣ ΑΙΤΕϜΑΡΓΟΝ
This inscription, says the Article in the Museum Criticum, is of older date than any other which has either been brought in copy from Greece, or is to be found on the marbles. The matter of it is a public treaty, between the Elians and some of their neighbours, concluded for an hundred years.
Another good example of the interchange of the vowels α and ε is in the word ἀρόω, which it is obvious to derive from ἔρα, the earth. In the Latin we see both forms preserved, the one in aro to plough, the other in sero to sow. And this latter suggests the derivation of the Greek σπείρω from a similar source.
If then the meaning of Ἄργος be an agricultural settlement, and its root the same with that of ἔργον, we need not now discuss at large whether that root be the old word ἔρα or terra, which however appears to be probable, and which accounts both for the especial reference of the word ἔργον in Homer to tillage, the oldest industry, and for the subsequent extension of its meaning to labour and its results in general.
The etymology tested by kindred words.
Now, having this view of the words Ἄργος and ἔργον, we shall find, in the fundamental idea of labour itself, a meaning which will furnish a basis for the Homeric adjective, and for all its compounds in all their varied applications. That idea is always in relation with what is earnest, and (so to speak) strengthful; sometimes this takes the form of keenness, and then comes in the idea of swiftness in conjunction with labour: sometimes, again, it takes the form of patience, and then labour suggests slowness. The labour of a dog is swift, that of an ox is patient: hence the κύνες ἄργοι are laborious dogs, therefore swift; and hence too the βόες ἄργοι are laborious oxen, therefore slow; the office of the one being to cover space, and of the other to overcome resistance. We may bring the two senses near without any loss in either case, by calling the oxen sturdy or sedulous, and the dogs strenuous or keen.
The third sense of whiteness legitimately attaches to the effect of rapid motion upon the eye.
The sense of sleekness does not appear to be required in Homer: but it may be a derivative from that of whiteness.
By one or more of the three first senses, or by the original sense of labour in its (so to speak) integral idea, all the Homeric words may be justly rendered. Some of them will bear either the sense of swift, or that of white: for instance, ἀργὴς with κεραυνός. In Aristotle[671], de Mundo, c. 4, we have τῶν κεραυνῶν ... οἱ ταχέως διάττοντες, ἀργῆτες λέγονται. And again, ἀργεστὴς with Νότος. This may mean the fleet Notus: it may also mean white, as carrying the light white cloud from over the sea, in the sense taken by Horace, who appears to have been an accurate and careful observer of Homeric epithets; and who says,