L'antiquité classique

Argos Achaiikon
Peter J. Lopston

Résumé
Cet essai tend à montrer que l'idée que se fait Homère des endroits appelés Argos est bien plus précise et uniforme qu'on ne l'a
généralement cru. Hormis deux références à la ville d'Argos et une autre à l'Argos pélasgien, Argos est conçu par Homère
comme un territoire défini qui comprend la plus grande partie du Péloponnèse, c'est-à-dire le domaine continental de la maison
de Pélops. Homère se représente l'Argos achéen comme un grand royaume unitaire, gouverné par Agamemnon, divisé en
régions ou provinces. L'étude détermine aussi ce qu'il entend par « Argiens ».

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Lopston Peter J. Argos Achaiikon. In: L'antiquité classique, Tome 55, 1986. pp. 42-65;

doi : https://doi.org/10.3406/antiq.1986.2169

https://www.persee.fr/doc/antiq_0770-2817_1986_num_55_1_2169

Fichier pdf généré le 18/12/2018

 ARGOS ACHAIIKON

The place name Argos occurs twice in the Catalogue of Ships, 27 times
in the Iliad (exclusive of the Catalogue), and 16 times in the Odyssey. In
spite of what learned reference works of German and English assert, it is
candidly to be acknowledged that a very large portion of these occurrences
are compatible with more than one possible, often more than one plausible
identification. Quite a few of the Homeric references to Argos are of the
sort where death far from Argos, flight back to Argos, and the like are
involved. The context is general, and while many of them involve Argives
- in the sense that Í will presently argue is intended in these pages — as
speakers, they do not all do so. These are of course the passages that have
inspired the idea that in Homer Argos sometimes stands for the whole of
Greece.
There are only two certain cases of the town of Argos being referred to
— Iliad, ii, 559 and rv, 52. In other cases the town is possible, but as in
a great majority of cases a town cannot be meant, there can be no general
presumption that the town is ever referred to otherwise than on these two
occasions \
It also seems clear that there is more than one country or region that
is referred to as Argos in Homer. That appears to be what is indicated by
a reference to the Pelasgian Argos (Iliad, n, 68 1), which is naturally taken
as contrasting with the Achaian Argos, so styled four times in Homer.

1 Odyssey, χα, 108 would seem to be a reference to a city of Argos. Telemachos refers
to the entire "Achaian land" ( Άχαας γαία) and major places in it, at least as they look
from a perspective in Ithaka. He mentions Pylos, Argos, Mykenai, Ithaka, and "the dark
mainland" — which we evidently cannot suppose to have quite yet become Epeiros. Pylos
is both a country — the country of the Pylians — and the capital city of that country
throughout Homer. Ithaka and "the mainland" are countries, not cities. Mykenai though
is only a city. So Argos here could be either a country (or region) or a city. It is made
abundantly clear in the Iliad that Mykenai is a city in a country called Argos. So this Argos
would look to be the city ofthat name. (Otherwise we would have a list comparable to one
we might imagine that itemized both France and Paris as major places in Europe — which
is implausible, but not impossible.)
 ARGOS ACHAIIKON 43

But as with other entities, places called Argos should not be multiplied
beyond necessity. If we can understand the Homeric texts in such a way
that only three places called Argos ever need be meant, that will be better
than supposing that the poet or poets mean to talk of four or five, as do
most of the reference works alluded to above. The argument presented
here will seek to show that in Homer — Catalogue, Iliad, Odyssey — Argos
always refers literally to one of three places, and in fact outside the
Catalogue just to two — and except for the two (or possibly three)
references to the city of Argos already referred to, just one place. The
thesis of this paper is that Homeric Argos — "Argos Achaiikon" — is,
generally and consistently, in the Catalogue of Ships, the Iliad, and the
Odyssey, a single fairly well-defined and clearly understood place ; that it
is a country, in a political sense, i.e., a region united under a single ruler
and administration ; that it occupied the districts that in classical times
were known as Achaia, Argolis, and Lakonia, and possibly also Arkadia ;
and that its ruler was Agamemnon. Corollary to these primary claims I
will argue that this country — Argos Achaiikon - was, in the Homeric
picture of Greece 2, far and away the largest, most populous, and most
powerful Achaian state, and that it was divided into provinces, or smaller
administrative units, one of them — Lakonia - governed by Menelaos,
another — Argolis — by Aigisthos, and the third — Achaia-Corinthia (with
Mykenai itself) — by Agamemnon, who also was king of the entire
country.
Before setting out the Homeric case for this thesis it will perhaps be
appropriate to indicate explicitly the assumptions I make about the
Catalogue of Ships, as a good deal will depend on just how that peculiar
piece of poetry is regarded.
The view that seems to me on the whole most plausible to adopt
regarding the Catalogue of Ships is that an earliest version of this work
was likely composed in the 12th or 1 lth century B.C., among and for an
audience of émigré Achaian Greeks who were entertaining or consoling

2 "Homeric Greece" may or may not correspond to political, ethnic, or administrative

realities of Late Mycenaean or Submycenaean Greece. It seems to me that the likeliest view
is that much of the political geography is a Mycenaean (or Submycenaean) survival, but,
except parenthetically and in passing, that question will not be considered here. It should
be emphasized as well that this paper will be arguing for a more precise and more
consistent Homeric political geography than has usually been discerned. This will by no
means preclude (some) imprecision or inconsistency in Homeric political geography.
44 P. J. LOPTSON

themselves with tales of departed glory 3. 1 take this earliest Catalogue to

have been in dactylic hexameter verse and to have been composed perhaps
from the beginning for adaptation and general use in poems about the
Trojan War. I would take it as likely that alteration in the Catalogue, even
including its "core" lines of names and places, tribes, and leaders, will
have occurred, though there is no reason to believe such alterations
considerable. There is some certainly late language even in the "core"
Catalogue 4. This may be compared with the description of the certainly
Mycenaean boars' tusk helmet at Iliad, x, 261-265 (which also includes
linguistic forms that post-date the Ionian migration) 5. The most
explanation in both cases is the assumption of an earlier purely
Mycenaean version of both sections of hexameter which — perhaps
because the original was so old it wasn't fully understood, or perhaps to
abbreviate, or lengthen it — was partly re-composed. The Catalogue, on
this view, is a valuable but only obliquely reliable document. One cannot
be sure how early a given portion of it is, although there should be grounds
for confidence in the antiquity of most of the work.
This view of the Catalogue may be described as a considerably modified
version of the thesis argued for by T. W. Allen [ The Homeric Catalogue
of Ships (Oxford, 1921)], Viktor Burr [ΝΕΩΝ ΚΑΤΑΛΟΓΟΣ, in Klio
Beih., 39 (1944)], and D. L. Page (History and the Homeric Iliad,
Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959), and accepted by a great many
Homeric and Mycenaean scholars, though very emphatically not
by others. The case for a genuinely Mycenaean catalogue seems to be not
good. The problems are only partly linguistic, though these are formidable.
More daunting are the serious implausibility of a genuinely "pan-Achaian"
overseas military/naval expedition, on the appropriate scale, in the second
half of the 1 3th century B.C. (or indeed at any time), and the mythological
detail embedded in the Catalogue as factual (sons of the god Ares, who

3 A number of considerations, both internal and external, would even encourage the
speculation that the original composer was a Boiotian, and his audience an emigre
population in Attika, possibly Athens itself, prior to their departure as the colonizers of
Ionia.
4 See G. P. Shipp, Studies in the Language of Homer, 2nd edition, Cambridge, 1972,
pp.5 235
See ff.
A. Hoekstra, Homeric Modifications of Formulaic Prototypes, Amsterdam, 1969,
pp. 73, 141 ; also J. A. Davison, The Homeric Question, in A. J. B. Wace and F. H.
Stubbings (ed.), A Companion to Homer, London, 1963, p. 257, and T. B. L. Webster,
From Mycenae to Homer, New York, 1964, p. 101.
 ARGOS ACHAIIKON 45

visits their human mother — π, 512 ff. ; a singing encounter between a

human — and a Thracian ! — and the Muses, π, 594-600 ; a king in Kos
named Thessalos, n, 679 ; sons of Asklepios, the mythic physician and
surely originally a god, n, 73 1 ; a son of Zeus himself, n, 741). There may
also be some genuine incoherencies in the Thessalian section of the
Catalogue, as Leaf argued {Homer and History, London, 1915, ch. iv) 6.
In brief the Catalogue must be a fictional document, and a creation of
artifice — even if there was a genuine Trojan War, a major conflict between
several south Mycenaean states leagued together under the leadership of
a Mycenaean king named Agamemnon, and a force of Trojans and their
allies, under a king named Priamos, culminating in the destruction of Troy
some time around the year 1235 B.C., all of which seems on the whole
likely (though not certain).
The case for a Catalogue originally composed by a poet or poets in
LH III C, or — more probably — the Submycenaean period following it,
seems a good deal more promising. Motive, circumstances, both plausible
"pan-Achaian"
and encouraging for composition, including consciously
sentiment, clear Mycenaean memories (some at least), all appear
in the context of an Achaian refugee community in Attika in the
12th or early 1 lth centuries B.C. We may think of the children,
or great-grandchildren of these refugees as bringing the
with them, with other oral poetry, to Ionia 7. Still, I would not argue
that the Catalogue cannot have been composed later. It would seem
possible that an 8th century poet — but not Homer himself, who cannot
have had the major interest in and detailed knowledge of Boiotia that the
Catalogue-poet reveals — combined older "mini-catalogues" and other

6 It is also commonly argued that since the Catalogue must post-date the arrival of
Boiotians in Boiotia, its composition date must be later than 1 150 B.C. or even 1 125 B.C.,
since — so it is assumed — we can rely on Thucydides' assertion (i, 12) that the Boiotians
arrived 60 years after the fall of Troy. This argument must presumably have some weight.
Cf. Page, op. cit., p. 152 ; V. Desborough, The Greek Dark Ages, New York, 1972, p. 69 ;
D. G. Miller, Homer and the Ionian Epic Tradition, Innsbruck, 1982, pp. 11, 149. The
archaeological evidence does appear to establish that a significant new population group
came into Boiotia in waves from the middle decades of the 12th century B.C., and these
people will presumably be the Boiotians. Cf. R. J. Buck, A History ofBoeotia, Edmonton,
1979,
7 This
ch. general
5, passim.
view almost precisely coincides with that taken by Paul Cartledge,
Sparta and Lakonia, London, Boston and Henley, 1979, pp. 335-337 ; save that the
formation of the earliest versions of the Troy tale in oral hexameter verse, including the
Catalogue of Ships, would seem to me definitely pre-migration, and slightly earlier than
Cartledge argues for.
46 P. J. LOPTSON

scattered geographical material to compose the Catalogue ; but extremely

unlikely.
Now, the evidence for the theses set out above :
1. In the Catalogue's entry for Menelaos, we find two curious Unes
(π, 586 f.)
των οι άδελφεος ήρχε, βοήν αγαθός Μενέλαος,
έξήκοντα νεών · άπάτερθε δε θωρήσσοντο
("these men his brother led, Menelaos good at the war cry, in sixty ships ;
and they were stationed apart").

Two questions are raised by these lines. First, whose brother is

Menelaos being said to be ? No other human being is mentioned in the
entry itself. The answer of course is Agamemnon, whose contingent has
just been enumerated. So the reference goes back to the entry discussed
immediately prior to Menelaos' ; grammatically, to a line six Unes before.
The second question is, why are Menelaos' men said to be stationed
apart ? Apart from whom ? And why ? No other force among the whole
of the 29 contingents in the Catalogue is said to be stationed apart.
Surely the plain sense of the phrase is that Menelaos' contingent is
stationed apart from that of his brother Agamemnon.
But why bother to say that, especially if, as the later classical tradition
generally asserts, Mykenai was one kingdom, and Lakedaimon another,
and Agamemnon was ruler of the former and Menelaos, through marriage
to the Lakedaimonian heiress, the ruler of the latter ?
What will be argued here is that this view of the political geography of
the eastern Peloponnesus, taken for granted from the post-Homeric period
onward, was not in fact the tradition known to the composer of the
Achaian Catalogue, nor to the composers either of the Iliad or the
Odyssey.
If we ask our question again : why would the poet make mention of
Menelaos' forces being stationed apart from those of his brother ? A part
of the answer must surely be, because it would have been natural,
reasonable, to suppose them not to be stationed apart from
men. Something one might well have expected is not what one finds
to be the case.
Why would it have been natural, appropriate, for the men of
and the men of Mykenai (and their respective districts) to have
formed a single, common force? That their leaders happened to be
brothers can hardly be sufficient reason» not at least, all by itself.
 ARGOS ACHAIIKON 47

2. Menelaos' missing bride, now ensconced in Troy as wife {not

concubine : the point is made very clear in Homer) of Paris 8, is styled,
again and again in the poem (and also in the Odyssey), Άργείη 'Ελένη
"Argive Helen", or "Helen of Argos". Yet she is supposed to be from
Lakedaimon, not the town of Argos, or the district surrounding the town.
Some think Argos a general term in Homer for Greece 9. Is Άργείη
'Ελένη then, simply Helen the Greek? This does not seem a very
distinctive epithet. And it does not seem very plausible to suppose that this
is what it means.
3. Another puzzle, that has received a lot of discussion both in ancient
times, and in modern : in Book ix Agamemnon offers to make
to Achilleus, and among what the wanax andron offers the angry
hero are seven cities "on the borders of sandy Pylos". These cities, all of
them named and some of them locatable 10, are to be his, Achilleus', and
their people will obey and be ruled by him. Critics have asked, How can
Agamemnon give these cities away ? They aren't his to give. They ought
to belong to Nestor of Pylos, or to Menelaos (the Greek evidently
allowing cities on the borders of Pylos to be on either side of those
borders).

8 In spite of which relationship there is never offered the slightest suggestion that Paris
now has some sort of claim to the Lakedaimonian throne (as one might suppose he would,
jure wcoris, as Helen's husband). There is in fact no evidence at all anywhere in Homer,
of Helen as queen or royal heiress of Lakedaimon. If any of her immediate family were
thought to have dynastic claims in that district, it would surely be one (or both) of her
brothers Kastor and Polydeukes. By Homer's account {Iliad, iv, 236-244), they are still
living at the time of their sister's elopement with Paris, although dead shortly thereafter.
Yet here again there is no hint or clue that they are kings or crown princes in Lakedaimon ;
nothing at all to suggest otherwise than that they and their sister are, in status, Achaian
nobles, and subjects of an Achaian king.
9 I almost endorse this common view myself, in passing, in an earlier paper on the
Pelasgian Argos of Iliad, n, 691 (Pelasgikon Argos in the Catalogue of Ships, in
1981, fase. 1-2). The present account is intended to indicate in what sense — it is
a type of synecdoche — the term does almost signify the whole of Greece in Homer, while
remaining always literally the name of a very definite proper part of the country.
10 As with most other themes in Homeric geography, the fullest early discussion of these
cities is Strabo's (IV, 8, 3-5). In his day the locations of three of the seven were in dispute,
some of the identifications seeming to be largely fanciful guesswork ; and at least one other
city seems to have been guessed at as well. The situation has not materially changed since
then. Modern discussions include H. Thomas and F. H. Stubbings, Lands and Peoples in
Homer, in Wace and Stubbings, op. cit., pp. 291 f. ; D. L. Page, History and the Homeric
Iliad, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963, pp. 133, 165 f.
48 P. J. LOPTSON

4. Another much discussed passage (n, 100-108) describes

as having inherited the sceptre of rule, from Thyestes, successor of
Atreus, as wanax of "all Argos and many islands" u. Yet the Catalogue
of Ships seems to confine Agamemnon's domains to Mykenai, Corinthia,
and classical Achaia, without islands, and not including the town of Argos
or its environs.
5. In the Odyssey (m, 249-252), Telemachos wonders why Menelaos
wasn't there, in Argos Achaiikon ("Achaian Argos"), when Aigisthos
slew Agamemnon. Surely, he thinks, Aigisthos wouldn't have dared to kill
his cousin if Menelaos had been on the scene. But why should Menelaos
have been around, if he lives and rules in Lakedaimon, and Agamemnon
lives and rules considerably to the north, in Mykenai ?
6. Why has Agamemnon, on his homeward journey from Troy (Od,
TV, 574 f.), almost reached home when he is about to round Cape Maleia,
the southern promontory of Lakedaimon ? How can this be the area of his
"dear native land", as the text asserts ?
These passages, and the puzzles they raise, are resolved by a single
hypothesis, and possibly only by this one. In considerable part it has
been proposed before 12. I want to present it again, and to suggest that
cumulatively the evidence for it is extremely powerful ; and that the
passage with which I began, in the Catalogue of Ships, really ties the
picture together.
Menelaos' men might well have been expected to have marched with
Agamemnon's for the simple reason that they came from the same

11 The same idea recurs frequently in Homer, if more briefly. Thus, at x, 32 f.,
Agamemnon is described as the man who μέγα πάντων/ Άργείων ηναασε ("rules mightily
over all the Argives" - my emphasis).
12 The idea that Argos sometimes stands for the kingdom of Agamemnon has been
affirmed frequently, e.g., by W. Leaf, in Homer and History, London, 1915, Ch. VI,
passim. Leaf however takes the Argos of which Agamemnon is king to be all of Greece.
Others, since, agree that Argos is at least sometimes Agamemnon's kingdom, but identify
it with Achaia and Argolis. The specific thesis of the present paper, viz., that (Achaian)
Argos is "the mainland territories of the house of Pelops", i.e., including domains often
thought of as "kingdoms" belonging to Menelaos and Diomedes as well as the domain
assigned Agamemnon in the Catalogue but not including the whole Peloponnesus has, so
far as I am aware, never been fully or explicitly affirmed before. Cedric H. Whitman, in
Homer and the Heroic Tradition, Cambridge Mass., 1958, p. 41, asserts part of the thesis :
"Diomedes' 'kingdom' of the Catalog can only have been a baronial estate held under the
Mycenaean overlord." Yet, as I will argue, there is no reason even to suppose that the
Argolid, whether kingdom or barony, belonged to or was even governed by Diomedes (or
was so regarded by the Catalogue poet).
 ARGOS ACHAIIKON 49

country, at least in the political sense of the word "country". That is, the
regions described for Agamemnon and Menelaos comprised a single
kingdom, or state, under a single political jurisdiction. That kingdom -
which may have been still larger than this, as will be argued presently -
was what is generally referred to as Argos Achaiikon, and its king or
wanax was Agamemnon. The sceptre passage indicates this, as does the
giving away of cities — which will then have been on the Lakedaimonian
not the Pylian side of the Lakedaimon-Pylos border — to Achilleus.
Menelaos then was not king of Lakedaimon (either in his own right or
through marriage to a royal heiress). He apparently rules there — though
nothing in the Catalogue says or implies this 13 — but as viceroy or
governor for his brother. Lakedaimon in short is a province of a single
kingdom, another province of which is the district directly ruled by
Agamemnon. This immediate district may be thought of as the latter's île
de France, the dynastic "home provinces".
Quite a few assumptions about the political geography lying behind the
Achaian Catalogue have I think been made, from the first commentators
on Homer onwards, and completely without reflexion or justification.
Most writers simply take for granted, for example, that each separate
contingent in the army at Troy must correspond to an autonomous
kingdom 14, whose wanax (or his son and heir apparent) is identified as
leader or principal leader in the Catalogue 15. This is completely unwar-

13 The Catalogue is in general far more sparse in its political or institutional revelations
than critics have almost invariably supposed. Nothing whatever in the wording of the
Catalogue licences the idea of a kingdom of Diomedes — or of Menelaos, or Odysseus, or
Aias. There is not even a prima facie presumption inherent in the wording, or the divisions
drawn, that these are independent nation-states ; nor that they are not. What are described
are regions, zones, districts — in some cases peoples, of a common tribe — and their
leaders, in a naval and military expedition. A leader need not be a king, or a crown prince,
or even a tribal chief.
14 In contrast with geographic, ethnic, or cultural regions (like Arkadia, Boiotia,
Thessaly) which, at least in classical times were not organized as countries under a central
administration. An alliance or federation of autonomous cities, inhabited by people of
common stock or culture, will not amount, in this usage, to a Kingdom. By a province I
mean an administrative subdivision of a Kingdom.
15 This is clearly the view taken throughout their valuable work, by R. Hope Simpson
and J. F. Lazenby, The Catalogue of Ships in Homer's Iliad, Oxford, 1970. Sixteen of their
chapters are called "The Kingdom of Diomedes", "The Kingdom of Meges", etc. (The city
of Argos, they tell us, "was presumably Diomedes' capital", p. 6 1.) Denys Page, in History
and the Homeric Iliad, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959, has the same view, Page again
and again calling the territorial units described in the Catalogue "kingdoms". So too do
Helen Thomas and Frank H. Stubbings, in their Lands and Peoples in Homer (in A. J. B.
50 P. J. LOPTSON

ranted. There is nothing whatsoever in the wording in the Catalogue, or

in the rest of Homer, which would justify such a view. The Catalogue's
survey is of men, soldiers, organized by fleets of ships, from districts,
towns, and sometimes in tribal units, and under the leadership of one or
more persons. Undoubtedly some of the 29 contingents are to be thought
of as corresponding to nation-states of Achaian Greeks, whose wanaktes
are named in the Catalogue. But there is nothing even slightly implausible
in the idea of quite different types of polity occurring there as well. For
example : a contingent might consist of the men of a certain geographical
district, not organized from a central administrative town in normal
circumstances, but grouped together in voluntary federation at Troy (i.e.,
having formed a common regiment for the war, and elected or otherwise
appointed some prominent or likely citizen — or a team of several of them
— temporary, military leader) ; or it might consist of the men of a
particular ethnic or tribal grouping, again, not organized as a nation in
peacetime, but confederating for the war effort ; or a contingent might be
a province of a larger political unit, where the province was big enough or
culturally distinctive enough to marshal its own force, even though still a
province of the larger unit.
It is precisely the latter I am suggesting is the picture intimated in
Homer, and lying behind and explaining π, 587. Agamemnon is king
(wanax) of what is far and away the largest and most powerful state in
Achaian Greece. He is not wanax of the whole of Achaian Greece. The
evidence of the poems makes this very clear. So does the archaeological
evidence, since the Linear Β tablets from Pylos indicate unmistakably that
Pylos is a politically independent kingdom with its own wanax. But
Agamemnon's kingdom is enormously larger than any other. So large that
it is divided into provinces Gust as the Pylos tablets show us, on its smaller
scale, that kingdom was). The whole kingdom is called Argos (perhaps
Argos-and-many-islands). This name, as well as other data from the

Wace and F. H. Stubbings, A Companion to Homer, London and New York, 1962,
pp. 288 ff.). Thomas and Stubbings talk of "the ... state of Minyan Orchomenos", "the state
of Argos" (calling this also "the Argive kingdom"), "the kingdom of Menelaos", etc. G. S.
Kirk {The Songs of Homer, Cambridge, 1962, p. 225), discussing the Catalogue, writes
of "the Argive plain, which belongs to Diomedes", "the kingdoms of Odysseus, Achilles",
etc. A. Giovannini {Étude Historique sur les Origines du Catalogue des Vaisseaux, Berne,
1969) also takes for granted that the Catalogue means to be describing autonomous
kingdoms or states. So does J. F. Hooker {Mycenaean Greece, London, 1976, p. 136).
Many other writers on Homeric political geography make the same assumption.
 ARGOS ACHAIIKON 51

Catalogue, the epic tradition, and plain geographic and archaeological

probability, will suggest an extension of this thesis : namely, that the area
in the Catalogue assigned to Diomedes — which there never was the
slightest justification for calling "the kingdom of Diomedes" 16 — is to be
thought of as a third province of this same great kingdom.
The political geography of the Argive plain during the Mycenaean age
has received a great deal of discussion. As has been pointed out, the
problems posed by the existence of the two massively fortified citadels of
Mykenai and Tiryns about fifteen kilometers apart on the Argive plain
[and a third heavily walled fortress at Dendra (Midea)], are wholly
independent of any question raised by the Achaian Catalogue of the Iliad.
On the whole the solution to these problems that will be implied by the
hypothesis offered here may well seem, again independently of the
Catalogue, the most persuasive of the several alternative solutions that

16 In fact if anyone is to be thought of as a "wanax" of the Argolid (other than

Agamemnon, as is argued here) it should be Euryalos, not Diomedes. Euryalos is the third
of the three 'leaders' of the men of the Argolid, after Diomedes and Sthenelos ; but only
Euryalos is called son of a wanax (again at xxui, 678, as well as in the Catalogue).
Diomedes is said to be principal leader {συμπάντων δ 'ήγεϊτο, the poet says), but this again
doesn't make him a king. The only line in the whole of Homer that even appears to imply
kingship for Diomedes is Iliad, xxra, 47 1 — which was rejected as spurious by Aristarchus.
In any case that line only describes Diomedes as ruling among the Argives. (The verb is
άνάσσειν, but by the 8th century B.C. this will have meant no more than "to rule" rather
than what it presumably originally meant, "to be wanax", in the technical, Mycenaean sense
of the latter term.) As an Achaian noble of major stature, Diomedes presumably will be
regarded by the tradition as ruling — in some town or citadel of the Argolid (and possibly
the city of Argos itself). Diomedes is a noble. He is prosperous, and royally connected.
He will have inherited his father's extensive estates {Iliad, xiv, 121-125), and himself
married another member of the family of Adrastos, as his father had done. (Interestingly,
his wife's name is Aigialeia, which can only be connected to the Aigialos, the classical
Achaia, in Agamemnon's personal domains. Again, we see Argive nomenclature closely
interconnected.) But he is primarily a great warrior, and war leader, and never implied to
have independent authority at home. Otherwise, his absence from the story of the murder
of Agamemnon and its revenge is inexplicable. But in any case the matter is made
abundantly clear throughout the Iliad. (Cf. the discussion of Diomedes - in all essentials
with the same conclusions as the present ones — in Martin Nilsson's Homer and Mycenae,
Philadelphia, 1933, p. 259.) Another Homeric character — in addition to Euryalos — with
better credentials for being wanax of the Argolid is Aigisthos, Agamemnon's cousin and
eventual murderer. At Odyssey, w, 514-518, we are told of the land — the description
seems to indicate the Argolic promontory (though some critics, ancient and modern, take
it to be the island of Kythera) — where Thyestes, and after him, in succession, his son
Aigisthos dwell. Probably we should see all the Argive provinces as ruled or governed by
members of the Pelopid dynasty, as this passage obliquely implies, but, equally, ruled only
as viceroy, or governor, under the supremely sovereign "widely ruling king of men".
52 P. J. LOPTSON

have been or might be proposed. If Mykenai and Tiryns are the capitals
respectively of two provinces of a single great state (the former also being
"federal capital" ofthat whole state), it may seem reasonable to think of
each becoming enlarged and fortified in near proximity to the other. It is
the walls of Tiryns that especially need explaining. Motives may readily be
thought of on our hypothesis : ostentatious local pride, focused on the
provincial capital, being one such motive. A Mycenaean state was a highly
centralized bureaucratic organization. There appears good reason to think
that these administrative apparatuses, and the ruling class as a whole, lived
in uncertain tyranny over a restless subject population. Again Cyclopean
walls may well have been thought a good defence of the central
structure, for a province as well as for the whole state ; and as
having point, symbolic as well as strategic, in overawing the dominated
classes.
If the Catalogue-poet is taking for granted, assuming, something like
what is claimed here, that the districts whose naval and military forces are
under the command of Agamemnon, Menelaos, and Diomedes, are
provinces of one great state, there is no need for him to make this explicit.
He is not engaged in political geography. If we are right, at the time the
Catalogue was composed his audience will have been as aware as he is of
this administrative division in the principal Achaian state.
In claiming some sort of consciousness of a division of the kingdom of
Argos into provinces, on the part of the composer of the original version
of the Catalogue of Ships, no such consciousness need be supposed to
have survived the Dark Ages into the period of composition of the Iliad
and the Odyssey — if the original Catalogue does indeed date from the
12th or 11th centuries B.C., as frequently and persuasively argued. The
Catalogue has of course been adapted to its place in the Iliad, whether by
Homer or by a successor. But the division of contingents with which we
are concerned (lines 569-586) will be, as far as we can tell, part of the
Catalogue in its earliest version, before genealogical and other comment,
or ships' numbers, had been added. That some memory of a great state
of Argos, of Mycenaean vintage, survived, both in the Peloponnesus and
in places of exile or migration for the Achaian Peloponnesian population,
seems to be entirely reasonable ; indeed, demanded by the classical heroic
tradition, which doesn't all come from Homer. But the subtleties of an
administrative division into provinces will be unlikely to have survived
much more than (say) a century after that division was a reality.
 ARGOS ACHAIIKON 53

Still another argument for the thesis proposed here is archaeological.

No major Mycenaean site, suitable to be viewed as a capital or centre, has
turned up in Lakonia 17. That is, Pylos, Mykenai, Athens, Orchomenos,
Iolkos, and possibly other centres, really are plausible candidates for ruling
centres for independent Mycenaean kingdoms corresponding to regional
divisions within the Homeric Catalogue. They are indeed part of the case
for the Catalogue's origins in an age looking immediately back to the era
of Mycenaean greatness. But, again, there is no Mycenaean palace in
Lakonia. This has led one recent specialist on Lakonian prehistory and
history to speculate that in the Mycenaean age Lakonia was controlled
from the Argolid 18. This is in substance the view favoured here. It is not
necessary to this view or its defence that the proposed "provinces" of the
great state whose capital was Mykenai were "equal" — or even
equal — in population, area, wealth, or power. Some substantial
population and ethnically or geographically distinctive features will
have to be envisaged for anything qualifying as a province within
a larger kingdom — but this is abundantly attested for the 13th and early
12th centuries B.C. in each of Corinthia, Argolis, Arkadia, and Lakonia.
The suggestion of a single great state of Argos will solve the dilemmas
and difficulties posed at the beginning in the following way : the poet
(whether the original Catalogue-poet or, later, Homer) is thinking of a
country of Argos. He is not thinking of a city-state, whether that city be
Mykenai, Argos, or Sparta. So, in his mind, anywhere in this country is
the homeland, and accordingly beloved, both of Agamemnon and of
Menelaos, and any place on its coast may well be the port of destination
of either brother on his return. Mykenai is Agamemnon's capital, so that
is presumably where he is to be thought of as (at least eventually) making
his way. But it is the country of Argos that he rules, and wants again to
reach 19. It is similar with Menelaos. He is the royal brother, the great

191817 In
P. his
ibid,
Cartledge,
p.classic
339. The
op.Rise
cit., of
pp.the50,
Greek
65 f.,Epic,
339.Oxford, 1934, pp. 209 f., Gilbert Murray
presents some of the evidence offered here, and much supportive data from classical
religious practices involving heroic honours paid to Agamemnon and Kassandra in Sparta,
and considers the hypothesis that Agamemnon is "really" a Spartan king, or co-king there
with his brother. Nothing of the kind need be or should be supposed. Or rather :
Agamemnon is a Spartan king, but only because Sparta was then a part of his Argive realm
(and not necessarily a subordinate or subject part). Agamemnon's kingdom, and death,
are also located in Sparta (at Amyklai, to be precise) in Pindar's eleventh Pythian Ode.
Stesichorus also regards Agamemnon as king of Sparta, as does Simonides ; Pausanias was
54 P. J. LOPTSON

king's brother and lieutenant, an Achaian Argive, and similarly "at home"
anywhere in Argos. And again he is specially domiciled in Lakedaimon,
where he is in charge (as viceroy or governor, though presumably with
additional status as a "prince of the blood"), so that is where he will head
on his return.
This will be a considerable part of the reason the poet of the Odyssey
must have Orestes avenge his father on the very day Menelaos lands again
in Argive waters 20. His tradition insists that Aigisthos did rule over
Argos-and-many-islands, in succession to the murdered Agamemnon, that
Orestes did finally kill Aigisthos ; and that Menelaos was a stalwart and
heroic warrior, and loyal brother, and perhaps also — see below —
Aigisthos' successor. The only way to make the tradition coherent is to
remove Menelaos entirely away from Greece for the whole of Aigisthos'
reign.
And Helen then will be "the woman of (the country of) Argos",
specially so styled because the Trojan War is primarily an Argive quarrel,
not that of the rest of Greece 21. Lakedaimon is her home district (though
it is interesting to note that her daughter has the name of a city in the
Argolid, another part of the great kingdom) 22. All Achaians in the epic
are nobles, and Helen is of course daughter of Zeus. Doubtless the
tradition always conceived her as the (putative) daughter of a Lakedaimo-
nian notable of some kind, perhaps the lord of a city in Lakedaimon.
Still another passage in the Iliad lends support to the view of Helen —
and her relationship to the rulers of Lakedaimon — argued here. At Iliad,
m, 49 Helen is described as having been, when Paris abducted her, a ννός
ανδρών αίχμητάων — "daughter-in-law of spear- wielding warriors". This
seems plainly inappropriate for a supposed queen or crown princess, suo
jure, of Lakedaimon ; and exactly apt for a lady who has married into the

shown Agamemnon's tomb there. Plainly there was a rich tradition of the high king's death
and career in this part of Argos.
20 Odyssey, m, 306-312.
21 This was seen long ago by W. E. Gladstone ( Landmarks of Homeric Study, London,
1890, p. 40) : "the characteristic epithet Argeie so often applied to Helen meant Helen of
Argos in the narrower sense of the specially Agamemnonian dominion". Gladstone does
not however indicate what he thinks the extent of this dominion was (e.g., whether it
included Lakedaimon or not).
22 Linda Lee Clader, in Helen .· The Evolution from Divine to Heroic in Greek Epic
Tradition, Leiden, 1976, pp. 62, 77, suggests further links between Helen and places in
the vicinity of the city of Argos.
 ARGOS ACHAIIKON 55

ruling dynasty of the land. It is to be noted further that if the view taken
here is correct, then the tradition of the suitors of Helen and their oath
- which first shows up in the Hesiodic Catalogues of Women and Eoaie
— will be regarded not merely as post-Homeric or extra-Homeric, but as
anti-Homeric, inconsistent with the conception of the legendary material
held by the poets who composed the Iliad and the Odyssey.
The Homeric evidence for Argos as the name of the land of which
Agamemnon is king is really extremely powerful, far more impressive than
has usually been recognized. Argos is Agamemnon's kingdom at Iliad,
i, 30 ; ii, 1 15 ; rv, 171, to look only to the first four books of the poem.
At vi, 224 Argos is the land where Diomedes lives. No indication is given
here — any more than in the Catalogue of Ships — that Diomedes is king
in or of this land. Agamemnon again calls his land Argos at rx, 22. The
same is implied at xm, 379. In Diomedes' account of his father Tydeus
in Book xrv, we are told that Aitolia is not pan of Argos, for Tydeus went
wandering from Aitolia to Argos and settled there. It is possible that the
city of Argos is meant here, but unlikely (Aitolia being a country, not a
city, symmetry will suggest the same for Argos). Herakles is brought by
Zeus safely back from Kos to Argos (xv, 30). This cannot be the town.
It appears plain from all references that, wherever Argos is, it is wholly
on the Greek mainland. Many other Homeric references point in the
direction of our hypothesis, and none are inconsistent with it.
Of the sixteen occurrences of "Αργός in the Odyssey, eight are, I think,
clearly supportive of the interpretation offered here. At in, 180, Argos is
where Diomedes beaches his ships on his return from Troy. This cannot
be the city of Argos, since the latter is well inland. So Argos here then is
the country where Diomedes is at home, and in the same context (in, 182)
it contrasts with Pylos, the country of Nestor. At in, 25 1 Argos Achaiikon
is the country of Menelaos, and also of Agamemnon and Aigisthos ; the
country, moreover, where Aigisthos kills Agamemnon. The city of Argos
is not meant here. Nor can Argos here be the whole of Greece. Then at
hi, 263 Nestor refers to the domicile of Aigisthos μνχω "Αργεος ιπηο-
βότοιο. Plainly again a city is not meant. Nor can the phrase mean in a
μυχός of Greece. This Argos is a country, and very definitely a proper part
of Greece. The word μυχός is certainly troublesome. It apparently can
mean either an innermost part — hence, one would suppose, of a place
the interior or centre — or a corner or nook — which ought to be
somewhere well away from the centre, at an outermost edge, and a
geographically notable jutting or promontory. Α μυχός of the country of
56 P. J. LOPTSON

Argos has usually been taken in the second of these incompatible senses.
So taken, Aigisthos should have his dwelling in an outlying "corner" of
a country of Argos, either bordering on the sea or some other country. In
any case this passage too speaks for our interpretation. So even more
strongly does iv, 174, where Menelaos declares to Telemachos that if
Odysseus had come to his country he would have given him a city in
Argos, one of those whose people now obey him — Menelaos — as lord
(wanax). Here again the city of Argos is obviously not meant. Argos is a
country, the one Menelaos dwells in and rules over, and a country
Odysseus does not live in. Further, plainly Argos here includes Lakedai-
mon. At iv, 562 Argos has the same significance : it is the country of
Menelaos, although the prophecy assures him he won't die there. Argos
occurs three times (xv, 224, 239, 274) in the story of Theoklymenos, the
fugitive from Argos who seeks passage with Telemachos as he prepares to
leave Pylos to return to Ithaka. This man is τηλεδαπός, "from a far-off
land", φεύγων έξ "Αργεος, "fleeing out of Argos". As with the Argos of
Menelaos this one is "horse-pasturing". It obviously is not Greece, and it
certainly looks to be the same country as Menelaos', and not merely the
city of Argos.
I take it then that 8 of the Odyssey's 16 references to an Argos explicitly
point to the identification made here. None of the other 8 are a problem
for this identification. The phrase 'Ελλάδα και μέσον "Αργός, "Hellas and
μέσον Argos", occurs in four of these cases. "Throughout Hellas and mid
Argos" the phrase literally says. But what really does mid Argos mean ?
Central Greece ? It wouldn't seem so. The phrase could mean something
directly supportive of my view. If the meaning were "Argos, which is
located in the middle" — i.e., in the middle or the centre of the Achaiis
gaia, the lands of Achaian Greeks, this would fit very well the large
Pelopid kingdom, flanked on the west by Pylos, Elis, and the Ionian
Islands, on the south by Crete, on the east by the Aegean islands, and on
the north by northern Greece 23. On this view μέσον is a characterization
of Argos, along with ίππόβοτον and πολνδίψιον. This will make ideal
sense as well for Diomedes' invitation to Glaukos at Iliad, vi, 224 f. He
welcomes Glaukos to be his guest whenever he might come "Αργεϊ μέσσω
"to mid Argos". He is hardly referring to Central Greece. The idea again,
I suggest, is a reference to a kingdom of Argos, that happened to be

23 This seems suggested by Lattimore's studiously ambiguous rendering, viz., "midmost

Argos".
 ARGOS ACHAIIKON 57

located in a large block of territory in the centre of the lands inhabited by

the Achaian Greeks. And the kingdom of Argos was big enough and
populous and powerful enough that "throughout Hellas and Argos"
should virtually manage to signify the whole of Achaian Greece. The name
Hellas evolved from a name of a small district in southern Thessaly to the
name for all of Greece, and at the time of composition of the Odyssey this
evolution was nearly but not quite complete. Perhaps the formula ????da
?a? µ?s?? "????? represents a stage in this evolution when Hellas is the
whole of continental extra-Peloponnesian Greece 24.
Interesting corroboration of what is claimed here, about the political
unity of the Argolid, Mykenai, and Lakedaimon in the Mycenaean age is
provided by Herodotus (i, 82). He tells us that "the whole country
westward, as far as Cape Malea, belonged once to the Argives, and not
only that entire tract upon the mainland, but also Kythera, and the other
islands". Some critics have taken these remarks as derivative echoes of
Homer, but there seems little reason to agree. The context in which
Herodotus presents this datum is wholly innocent of references to the
heroic age, or the poets. Others take the reference to be to the age of
Pheidon of Argos. But this seems too late for the context, and anyway
Pheidon doesn't appear really to have controlled so much territory as is
here asserted. Herodotus may also have in view a country (rather than
mere city, or city-state) of Argos when he speaks (i, 1), with reference to
the heroic age, of "Argos, in those days the most important of the
countries now called by the general name of Hellas".
All of Argos will have inherited traditions about the dynasties of great
kings of the past. (That is, I take it that this tradition of a great kingdom
of Argos, divided into provinces is not only the background assumption
of the composers of the Achaian Catalogue, the Iliad, and Odyssey, but
also, in overwhelming probability, an historical reality of 13th and 12th
century B.C. Greece 25. This will explain the Spartan localizations of

25 Although
24 This is thethis
view
need
adopted
not beby
insisted
Liddellupon.
andThe
Scott,
claimsub
made
'?????.
here is that the assumption
common to the Catalogue and the Iliad, and implicit in the Odyssey, is that Argos was a
country in the political sense of that word with approximately the boundaries
indicated. Such a country could have existed in the 9th or even the 10th century, but not
earlier as the poets suppose. Or it might just possibly never have existed outside the
imaginations of oral poets and their listeners. But neither of these seems likely. The high
probability will be that Argos, as described, was a really existing country of Achaian,
Mycenaean Greeks in the 13 th and probably also the 14th and the 12th - century.
58 p. j. loptson

Agamemnon's murder and place of burial in Pindar. Pindar lives (as

Homer does not, or only partly) in a world of city-states. By Pindar's day
local pride in Amyklai or Sparta may well have asserted that these very
towns were the sites of the death and burial of Agamemnon ; but the
earlier fact will have been local tradition, among Argives, of the murder
(and burial), in Argos, of the great hero-king.
The whole epic tradition, especially as it is identifiable from the Iliad,
but also from later sources, implies that there was a "great Kingship" of
some sort located in (though not necessarily confined to) the Argolid. Two
dynasties are seen as succeeding each other in this kingship, a Perseid
dynasty and a Pelopid one, the sequence of rulers named in the tradition
being Akrisios - Proitos Perseus Elektryon Sthenelos Eury-
stheus Pelops Atreus Thyestes Agamemnon Aigisthos
(Menelaos ) Orestes. A long succession for the heroic tradition. Further,
quite plainly in the tradition as the Iliad knows it, Herakles was to have
inherited this kingship, was in some sense the "rightful" or intended heir
as "wanax of the Argeioi" 26, but was dispossessed by his cousin Eury-
stheus. (This does not appear to be widely recognized but it is quite plainly
implied by the story of the births of the two cousins in Iliad, xrv. It may
well point to the real historical origins of the traditions about Herakles.)
One of the most striking, though least remarked upon, features of the
Greek traditions of this Argive kingship is how fluid the locale or the royal
capital is in different authors and contexts. The cities of Mykenai, Argos,
Tiryns, Amyklai, and Sparta all serve, or seem to serve, as the site of the
capital of the wanax of the Argeioi. This again seems to me to reinforce
the hypothesis argued for here. The Argive people will have been the
repository of the traditions of the great era and of the kings of their past,
whatever towns or cities they were dwelling in, including, after the chaos
of the 12th and 11th centuries B.C., places of exile and migration.
Iliad, vi, 152-159 - the account of Corinth/Ephyre will also
reinforce our hypothesis in its description of Ephyre as being µ???
"???e?? ?pp?ß?t??? "In a corner of horse-taming Argos". M. M. Wil-
lock 27 finds this term peculiar or misplaced. In fact, on the view argued

26 The "high king" of the Argives is also said (Iliad, xrx, 104 and 109) to be wanax
p??tess? pe???t???ess?.
27 A Companion to the Iliad, Chicago and London, 1976, p. 69. He says that describing
Ephyre, or Corinth, as being in a corner of Argos "seems odd to us".
 ARGOS ACHAIIKON 59

for here, it is absolutely apposite and correct : the boundary of the

kingdom of Argos will have been the Isthmus of Corinth, so Corinth will
be precisely in a nook or corner of that kingdom 28. This appears further
corroborated archaeologically by the fact of the Mycenaean wall
during the 13th century at the Isthmus ; and by the tradition 29 of the
battle against the sons of Herakles being fought by the armies of Eury-
stheus in that same place.
The phrase, µ??? "???e?? ?pp?ß?p???, is used in the Odyssey (m, 263)
to describe where it was that Aigisthos was living in comfort while the rest
of the Achaians are off at Troy fighting, and from where he thought to
seduce Klytaimnestra, eventually of course with success. As was noted
above (fii. 16), the poet of the Odyssey has a definite conception of where
it is that Aigisthos, and before him his father Thyestes, had their estates
or "principality". The two possibilities have seemed to be Kythera and the
Argolic promontory. Both will be "nooks" or "corners" of Argos,
certainly the latter will more obviously and literally deserve this
description. In fact if, as we have been supposing, Argos proper is
confined to the mainland (in contrast with the many islands that comprise
with Argos the state Agamemnon rules), then Aigisthos' "principality"
cannot be Kythera. The latter is inappropriate also for proximity to
Klytaimnestra. There being no other independent evidence for Thyestes or
Aigisthos in Kythera, I take it that the case for Argolis is assured. In that
event, the case for the third province of Argos the misnamed "kingdom
of Diomedes" is assured with it.
If Menelaos is mere viceroy or governor in Lakedaimon, how, one may
ask, can he give away Argive cities without the consent of his brother
or later, his nephew ? The answer appears to be that, upon his return to
Greece from Egypt, coincident with the death of Aigisthos, it is Menelaos

28 As W. Leaf and M. A. Bayfield indicate also in their edition of the Iliad, London,
1895, p. 388. (They take Argos to mean almost always in Homer either Greece as a whole
or the Peleponnesus, but most often the latter, acknowledging just two references in the
whole of the poems to the city of Argos and one certain and a few other possible references
to the Pelasgikon Argos. The view argued in the present paper is that they are right about
the city, and almost right about the other references : rather, though, that Argos
(Achaiikon) is a country (in a political sense), and one conceived as occupying over half
the Peloponnesus. And then that since this country was the principal protagonist in the
Trojan War, and, as well, by far the largest Achaian state, its name becomes used in the
poems,
29 Herodotus,
sometimes,rx,to26.
stand for all of Achaian Greece.)
60 P. J. LOPTSON

and not Orestes who becomes high king of Argos. The post-Homeric
authors make Orestes go mad from matricide and the pursuit of the Furies,
and wander far from Argos. Perhaps this was a rationalization for the
confusing - tradition that Menelaos succeeded Aigisthos 30. The
succession is confusing, and peculiar. It may well have followed
some principle of transmission that tradition recorded but that the
classical poets were bewildered by. Certainly the sequence of Atreus being
followed by his brother, then the latter by Atreus' son, then Agamemnon
by Thyestes' son, and the latter by Menelaos, is not a usual primogenitural
pattern. Perhaps the principle of succession was to eldest living male
member of the dynastic house, somewhat as with kingship in some Arab
monarchies ; or it may have been that the king was to appoint his own
successor, limited in his choices to the members of the ruling dynasty ; or
there may just have been chaos, and internal struggle for the succession
within the ruling house.
The post-Homeric tradition may make Orestes marry Hermione simply
because he is known to have succeeded Menelaos as king, and ignorance
of Argive administrative and dynastic realities make this appear to need
special explanation.
It will be impossible to prove, but it is appealing to see the three
provinces of the great kingdom of Argos as being obliquely referred to in
(and at any rate lying behind, and explaining) the goddess Hera's
declaration of her three favourite cities (Iliad, rv, 51 f.). She, whose
standard epithet, like Helen's, is ???e??, says that the dearest cities in the
world to her are Argos 31, Sparta, and Mykenai. Judging by its massive
walls, Tiryns, not Argos, would appear to have been the Mycenaean
capital of the Argolic province (although Argos then, as later, was an
important city - and possibly the capital) ; and Sparta is not likely to have
been the important centre it later became, in the Mycenaean age. But the
idea seems plainly there : the supreme Argive goddess declaring her
symbolic patronage of the three principal East Peloponnesian regions.

30 We are told explicitly by Pausanias (ii, 18, 5) that Orestes succeeded Menelaos in
Lakedaimon. Orestes is also King of Lakedaimon in Pindar's eleventh Nemean ode.
31 The city of Argos is only certainly referred to twice in the whole of Homer, in the
context indicated here, and in the Catalogue. Practically always a country or region is
referred to by this name (whether or not it is the one argued for in the present essay). Even
Diomedes has no certain connection with the city of Argos. At Odyssey, m, 180 ff., for
example, it is plainly the land of Argos he reaches, for Argos is not on the sea.
 ARGOS ACHAIIKON 61

A fourth district seems very probably to have been a dependency or

protectorate of the kingdom of Argos, in the heroic tradition implicit in
Homer : this is Arkadia. At least, it is persuasive to see Agamemnon's gift
of sixty ships to the Arkadians 32, and also the tradition of Echemos of
Tegea being the great champion of Eurystheus in the war of the Argeioi
in the Isthmus, against the children of Herakles 33, as implying this. (So,
too, would the tradition of Orestes' bones being located in Arkadia 34.)
Yet Argos is definitely not to be identified with the whole of the
Peloponnesus 35. Nor, as has frequently been pointed out, is there any
warrant in the Iliad, the Odyssey, post-Homeric tradition, or for that
matter, from archaeology, for the idea of an Achaian Empire, even a
confederated Achaian Empire, under the rule of the house of Atreus.
A generally clear and consistent sense that Pylos, and the land of the
Pylians, are one country, and Argos, and the land of the Argeioi, another,
distinct, foreign country, is found throughout Homer 36. See, for example,
Iliad, v, 541-552 : this passage strongly implies that the Trojan War is the
Argives' quarrel, and that Achaian Greeks outside Argos are following
along with the Argives in the expedition for some freely undertaken
purpose, certainly not as the subjects of the Atreidai. The same contrast,
between the Argives and their war, and the non-Argive Greeks who

32 Herodotus,
33 Iliad, u, 610-614.
rx, 26 f. Echemos was also the husband of Timandra, the sister of Helen
and Klytaimnestra [Hesiod, Catalogues of Women and Eoiae (Solmsen and Merkelbach
and West (Oxford) edition, fr. 23 (a), 176, 120-121, 167)], which would point in the

same
3534 In
Herodotus,
direction.
spite of the
i, 67
name
f. Peloponnesus, which, although it does not occur in Homer, is
known from the Cypria and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo - not later, that is to say, than
the 7th century B.C. The legendary traditions concerning Pelops are sketchy. The Iliad (n,
104-108) is the only source for the idea that he himself (as well as his sons and their
descendants) was high king of Argos. He is localized, from Pindar (Ol. 1) on, at Pisa and
Olympia, i.e. in the classical district of Pisatis, to the north of the Alpheios River. This
district does not occur at all in Homer, although the country of the Pylians evidently
extends to the Alpheios, and their next neighbours to the north are the Epeioi. Pisatis then
should be in Epeian territory. One might wish to see a case then for the idea of some sort
of suzerainty held by Argos the great state centred on Mykenai over Elis, as well as
over Arkadia.
36 Pylos, as the ships' numbers in the Catalogue and the evidence from archaeology
combine to attest, was the second great Achaian state in the late Mycenaean age, after
Argos, though still, with just 90 ships, as against the Argive total of 240 (plus 60 for
Arkadia). Thebes will earlier have been the second great Mycenaean state, but by the last
generation of Helladic grandeur was already destroyed.
62 P. J. LOPTSON

embark along with them, will be noted at Odyssey, xvin, 251-253, and in
many other places. Further explicit indication that the land of the Pylians
is an altogether different country from Argos will be found at Odyssey, xv,
225-240. Equally definite is the distinctness and foreign indeed, in this
case, non-Achaian, and almost alien (though still Greek-speaking) -
quality of the kingdom of the Thebans, the Kadmeioi.
It is instructive to compare the Homeric poet's use of the terms Argos
and Argeioi with the terms Prussia and Prussian, as they were commonly
used in Europe, outside Germany, in the years preceding 1871. Prussia
was, by far, the leading German state, enormously larger, more populous,
and more powerful than any of the others. Yet, until 1871 there was no
German state, simply a confederation formally, only an exceedingly
loose federation of wholly autonomous nation-states, of which Prussia
was just one. All of these nation-states went to war with France in 1870,
and all of them contributed soldiers to a common army, however
it was, in its composition and in its command, by Prussians. In law
and in fact it was a Franco-German war. Yet we call it, and very
reasonably, the Franco-Prussian war 37. Argos was, I suggest, the Prussia
of Mycenaean Greece (except that, unlike Germany, Greece never seems
to have been formally or fully unified under the rule of its most powerful
constituent community).
This will also explain why the Achaians at Troy can all of them, loosely,
be called Argives (just as all of the enemies of France in 1870 can, loosely,
be called Prussians). Achaian Greece in general, and the expedition
against Troy in particular, are Argive-dominated, heavily Argive-domi-
nated. But for all that the term Argive is not simply and precisely a
synonym for Greek (or Achaian, or Danaan). It does mean, generally in
Homer, a subject of the high king of Mykenai. It is then used, sometimes
but, as it were, ethnocentrically, to stand for all Achaians.
It is argued that "Argos" stands for the mainland portion of
great kingdom, as opposed to the "many islands" portion.
These islands will certainly have included Aigina and probably all the

37 Let us imagine a German heroic poem for the Franco-Prussian War, with its own
catalogue of forces of contingents, but composed by a popular, folk poet, not an official
or military historian. It seems easy to suppose such a "catalogue" informing us, say, that
"the men of Oldenburg were led by ...", "the men of Brandenburg were led by ...", "the
men of West Prussia were led by ...", and so on, without bothering to pause to say to the
poem's audience, "and Oldenburg is one country, and Brandenburg, West Prussia, etc.,
provinces of a distinct country" but the latter was in fact the case.
 ARGOS ACHAIIKON 63

islands near the shores of the eastern Peloponnesus. Possibly, at least at

one stage in Achaian history, they will have included Rhodes, Kos, and
the other Sporadic islands that appear in the Catalogue. (So at least the
extremely early associations of Herakles with mainland Argos and these
island groups may suggest.) The whole kingdom Argos-plus-many-
islands which may well have existed as such only for three or four
generations, appears to have called itself Achaiwia. At least, this
will explain the name of the classical province of Achaia, which
was of course a part of Agamemnon's domain, and explain also why the
leading Mycenaean state with whom the Hittites had contact was called
by them Ahhiyawa 38. That state must have been Argos-and-many-
islands : and classical Achaia cannot always have simply been called that,
when virtually all Greeks in Homer are Achaians 39. In Homer, the name

38 At least, if Ahhiyawa is the Hittite rendering of "Achaiwia". The Ahhiyawa/ Achaiwia

equation has been accepted, rejected, accepted again, and now again rejected by a majority
or consensus of scholars. The hypothesis at any rate remains not unreasonable. The ethnic
or tribal name Achaiwoi ( ??a?ß??) should yield a corresponding place name Achaiwia.
Perhaps it did. If so, it will fail to appear in Homer, since the latter name is metrically
impossible for dactylic hexameter, and an alternative is readily constructible for the verse
the ??a??? ?a?a of Iliad, I, 254, and vu, 124 and Odyssey, xxi, 107. In classical times
we find the district of Achaia. The latter name ought to be, and no doubt is, the contracted
descendant of Achaiwia. If the major Mycenaean state (or a major Mycenaean state) in the
15th- 13th centuries B.C. called itself Achaiwia, or if the people who lived there called
themselves Achaiwoi (whatever they called their state), then a reasonably similar version
of these names ought to be expected for Hittite references to this state or people.
'Ahhiyawa' (which in Greek should be something like Achiawa) is not remarkably close
to 'Achaiwia'. The problem with 'Ahhiyawa' is the second syllable. The only plausible
explanation, for the latter name's not more closely resembling 'Achaiwia' if the Hittite
name really was intended to represent the latter - would be that the Hittites began to use
the name Ahhiyawa at a time when they had extremely imperfect contacts with Mycenaean
Greeks, misheard the name ofthese people, and persisted in using a name that had become
canonical with them even after they were in a position to provide themselves with a more
accurate rendering of the name. There are many instances of the latter phenomenon in the
history of geographical contacts between peoples.
39 Not quite literally all of Homer's Greeks are Achaians. The Kadmeioi of Thebes are
not Achaians (Iliad, w, 382-390 ; v, 802-805 ; x, 285-290). And it is expressly asserted
in the Catalogue (n, 684) that Achilleus' people are, or include, Achaians which seems
to imply both that some of his people are not Achaians, and that, in any case at least some
of the people enumerated elsewhere in the Catalogue are not. (Otherwise, why mention
it?) Similarly, we are told (Odyssey, xrx, 172-177) that several peoples dwell in Krete,
speaking a variety of languages. Just one of these peoples are the Achaians. (Another are
the Dorians, who at least will have spoken Greek, however different from Achaian Greek.)
The Epeioi, the people settled in the northwest Peloponnesus, and on some of the islands
offshore and to the north, do not seem to be Achaians. (So at least Iliad, xt, 759 appears
to imply.)
64 P. J. LOPTSON

Achaia never appears, only Achaiis Gaia, and it plainly stands for the
whole (or virtually the whole) Greek-speaking world. Whether this is
another case of synecdoche, and originally only subjects of the house of
Pelops were Achaians or whether Mycenaean Greeks did in general call
themselves Achaiwoi, is difficult to say. It bears emphasis that the three
terms Homer uses, Argeioi, Achaioi, Danaoi, cannot originally have been
mere "synonyms", automatic alternatives for each other. I think the
account offered here does explain who the Argeioi originally and properly
were ; and it may partly explain the Achaioi. The Danaoi are perhaps the
entire Greek people.
If ???e??? functions in the Iliad synecdochically for the Argeioi and
their allies we will find here a parallelism with what is standardly found
in the case of the usual name for their opponents. Often ???e? is doing
duty for the Trojans and their allies. The Trojan catalogue, and frequent
references to allies, sometimes named, sometimes not, in the course of the
text, make it clear that the Achaians are doing battle with a large
assortment of peoples, among whom Trojans are the most numerous, and
of course the principal protagonists in and reason for the alliance. But
usually, in the battle descriptions, it is Trojans alone who are designated,
by the characters on both sides and by the poet, as the enemies of the
Achaians. The thesis argued for here is that the same sort of abbreviation,
or subsumption, or synecdoche, of Trojans and allies into Trojans, is met
with in Argives and their allies becoming Argives.
There is also, in the Catalogue of Ships, the Pelasgian Argos. I have
argued elsewhere that this is not, as has commonly been supposed, a city
or district within the kingdom ruled by Peleus ; but rather that the
Catalogue poet uses it to stand for the whole of northern mainland
Greece, from the Spercheios River valley onwards 40. (Essentially, that is

40 Pelasgikon Argos in the Catalogue of Ships, in Mnemosyne, 1981, fase. 1-2. I have
only discovered this since the latter paper was published, but this view was fairly clearly
(if briefly) set out by William Martin Leake, in his Travels in Northern Greece (4 vols.,
London, 1835), rv, p. 532. [Cf. William Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Geography, I (London, 1856), p. 209.] It also appears in W. Leaf, A Companion to the
Iliad, London, 1892, p. 85. This view was also reached independently, by Robert Drews,
in his Argos and Argives in the Iliad in Classical Philology, 74, 2 (April 1979),
pp. 117-120. The remainder of Professor Drews' view of Homeric Argos that it is
identical, always, with the Pelasgian (i.e., Thessalian) Argos seems to me wholly
implausible, and no better supported by his essay than it is by the Homeric texts. In any
case, it will be entirely incompatible with the view argued for in this paper, which is, inter
alia, that the principal point of a reference to the Pelasgian Argos is to contrast with the
 ARGOS ACHAIIKON 65

to say, Thessaly together with a few small adjacent districts. This was what
Strabo 41 took the Catalogue to mean by ta ?e?a?????? "?????.) The
Pelasgikon Argos seems to have been a region or district, not a single
kingdom, and with no central political administration unless, just
possibly, there once was such an administration and high kingship centred
in Iolkos, as the Argonautic legend might be thought to imply. Its unity
may have been cultural or ethnic, and certainly was geographic. For the
poet the contrast is between the Pelasgikon Argos and the Achaiikon
Argos the latter being the definite kingdom argued for here. The latter
is Argos proper, the former only in some secondary sense.
Once, in the Odyssey (xvin, 246) we find also a reference to an "?as??
?????. Eurymachos is telling Penelope that she is so beautiful, and
talented, that, if all the Achaians throughout Iasian Argos could see her,
the already large number of suitors would be enormously increased. It is
natural to take this to be a reference to the whole of mainland Greece. In
fact though it seems that it is again the Achaian kingdom of Argos which
is being referred to 42. Argos was celebrated in the heroic tradition for her
power, size, and wealth. Cf. the provincial islander Telemachos gaping
open-mouthed at the splendour of Menelaos' palace and the riches in it,
at Odyssey, rv, 69-75, and the grand seigneur manner Menelaos is assigned
in the same context. Eurymachos is a fellow islander, and no less
provincial. He is saying to Penelope : if she thinks there are a lot of suitors
now, just imagine how many there would be if all the wealthy available
men throughout the length and breadth of the largest, wealthiest Achaian
state had a chance to see her.
I conclude then that the Homeric references to Argos, including those
in the Catalogue of Ships, are both simpler and clearer than commonly
supposed. And that their careful study, together again with the invaluable
Catalogue itself, reveals a great deal about the political geography implicit
in the antique oral epic.

University of Saskatchewan, Peter J. LOPTSON.

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 0W0, Canada.

other, more usual Argos Achaian, middle, horse-pasturing, thirsty Argos, the kingdom
of the Pelopid dynasty.
41 vin, 6, 5.
42 So Strabo takes it as well (vin, 6, 5). The lasos from whom this epithet for Argos
stems is standardly taken to be an early king of Argos, the son of the eponymous king
Argos and father of Io (Apollodorus, The Library, p, 1, 3).