The Argeian name is confined in place to the Eastern Peloponnesus, and in time to the Perseid epoch. Upon the transfer of the sovereignty to the Pelopid house, the Argeian name ceases to be applied to their immediate subjects. Let us now examine passages which may illustrate the case.
1. Two or nearly three generations before the Troica, in the time when Bellerophon was young, Prœtus ruled over the Ἀργεῖοι,
πολὺ φέρτερος ἦεν
Ἀργείων· Ζεὺς γὰρ οἱ ὑπὸ σκηπτρῷ ἐδάμασσεν[685].
Now Prœtus was certainly not lord of Greece. There was no lord paramount of Greece before the Pelopids: and near the time of Prœtus we have Eurystheus, Œneus and his line, Cadmus and his line, Neleus and his line, Minos and his line, as well as probably other thrones, each in its own place. But Prœtus falls within the period of the Perseids, and within the local circumscription of the Eastern Peloponnesus where they reigned.
2. But neither is Eurystheus spoken of by Homer as sovereign of Greece; though he is king of the Argives[686],
ὃς Ἀργείοισιν ἀνάξει.
For when Juno fraudulently asks and obtains from Jupiter the promise that the person to be born that day shall enjoy a certain sovereignty, it is not over the Argives, but over the περικτίονες:
ἦ μὲν τὸν πάντεσσι περικτιόνεσσιν ἀνάξειν
ὅς κεν ἐπ’ ἤματι τῷδε πέσῃ μετὰ ποσσὶ γυναικός.
Thus the promise is the babe shall reign over περικτίονες, a word clearly inapplicable to the whole of that straggling territory, which was occupied irregularly by the Greeks. But when the fulfilment is claimed, it is that he shall reign over Ἀργεῖοι. Therefore the two names are coextensive, and accordingly Ἀργεῖοι does not mean all Greeks; for example, it does not include the line of Cadmus then ruling in Bœotia.