Albus ut obscuro deterget nubila cœlo
Sæpe Notus[672].
This sense of the word Argos will suit other uses of it which have not been yet named.
For instance, it will suit the ship Argo, which we may consider as swift, or, and perhaps preferably, as stout, strong, doing battle with the waves: as we now say, a good ship, or a gallant ship. Again, it suits the noble dog Argus of the Odyssey, whose character would be but inadequately represented by either patient, swift, or white. Considering this word as the adjective of the word which describes what has been well called by a writer of the present day, “noble, fruitful labour,” we at once see him before us, swift as he had been, and patient as he was, but also brave, faithful, trustful, and trustworthy. Argus the spy, named in the Ἀργειφόντης of Homer, represents one side of the early meaning of the word[673]. The adjective ἀργαλέος, exaggerating as well as isolating that element of difficulty which the root comprises, represents another: and the later word ἀργοῦντες[674], the idle, catching the idea of slowness at the point where it passes into inertness, similarly represents yet another.
Such being the case in regard to the name Ἄργος, we shall now have an easy task in dealing with Ἀργεῖοι.
Homer employs this word in four places (to speak in round numbers) for three in which he uses Δαναοί.
He employs it as an epithet, sometimes with the name of Juno, and frequently with the name of Helen.
The Danaan Argives of Od. viii. 578.
In the Odyssey[675] we have this singular and rare juxtaposition of the words:
Ἀργείων Δαναῶν ἠδ’ Ἰλίου οἶτον ἀκούων.
Nitzsch[676] observes, that we might almost suppose the word Ἀργείων to be an epithet, and this observation is quoted by G. Crusius. Eustathius, the Scholiast, Barnes, Payne Knight, do not notice it. It seems to me more agreeable to Homeric laws to treat Ἀργείων as the substantive, and Δαναῶν as the adjective. For as Homer knows of an Achaic, an Iasian, a Pelasgic Argos, so he may consistently speak of Danaan Argives, with the latent idea that there might be, and were, other Lowlanders out of Greece. But there were not, so far as we know, any other Danaans than a single Greek dynasty.