Again, the Pelasgic name, as will be further observed, is not in Homer specially connected with the South of Thessaly, where the realm of Peleus lay, but rather with the North, the towns and settlements of which are enumerated, not in the first, but in the later paragraphs of this portion of the Catalogue.
In the invocation of the Sixteenth Book, to which reference will shortly be made, Achilles at once addresses Jupiter as Pelasgic, and as dwelling afar (τηλόθι ναίων): therefore, the special Thessalian seat of the god could not be in the dominions of Peleus.
We have observed, again, in the earlier parts of the catalogue various collective names, afterwards explained distributively, for the various contingents: but there is not one of this class of names employed for any of the Eight Divisions which follow that of Achilles. They all seem to bear the form of particular distributive enumerations, belonging to the comprehensive head of Pelasgic Argos or Thessaly.
There is also something in the obvious break in the Catalogue, signified by the words
νῦν αὖ τοὺς ὅσσοι ...
which indicate, as it were, a completely new starting point. There is nothing else resembling them. They form the introduction to a new chapter of the lists, after a geographical transition from the islands: and there is no reason for these marked words, if Pelasgic Argos was either a mere town district, or a local sovereignty, but a very good reason, if Pelasgic Argos meant that great integral portion of the Greek territory, the vale of Thessaly, the particular parts of which the Poet was about to set forth in so much detail.
It may therefore be inferred, that the epithet Πελασγικὸν is applied by Homer to the Thessalian vale collectively, as it is contained between the mountains of Pindus to the west, Œta and Olympus to the north, Othrys to the south, and Ossa or the sea to the east. We might, without geographical error, translate the phrase τὸ Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος of the second Iliad by that name of Thessaly[131], which the country afterwards acquired: but the idea which it properly indicates to us, is, that Argos which had been settled by the Pelasgians.
It is the only geographical epithet which, applied to the name Argos, belongs to the north of Greece: and it is so applied by way of distinction and opposition to other uses of the name Argos in other parts of the poems, which we shall hereafter have to examine, namely, the Achaic and the Iasian Argos.
The Pelasgians: Dodona.