Book 8
6.9
The acropolis of the Argives is said to have been founded by Danaüs, who is reputed to have surpassed so much those who reigned in this region before him that, according to Euripides,“throughout Greece he laid down a law that all people hitherto named Pelasgians should be called Danaans.”Eur. Fr. 228.7 (Nauck)Cp.5. 2. 4. Moreover, his tomb is in the center of the marketplace of the Argives; and it is called Palinthus. And I think that it was the fame of this city that prepared the way, not only for the Pelasgians and the Danaans, as well as the Argives, to be named after it, but also for the rest of the Greeks; and so, too, the more recent writers speak of “Iasidae,” “Iasian Argos,” “Apia,” and “Apidones”; but Homer does not mention the “Apidones,” though he uses the word “apia,”Hom. Il. 1.270, quoted by Strabo in 1. 1. 16 rather of a “distant” land. To prove that by Argos the poet means the Peloponnesus, we can add the following examples: “Argive Helen,”Hom. Od. 4.296and “There is a city Ephyra in the inmost part of Argos,”Hom. Il. 6.152and “mid Argos,”Hom. Od. 1.344and “and that over many islands and all Argos he should be lord.”Hom. Il. 2.108And in the more recent writers the plain, too, is called Argos, but not once in Homer. Yet they think that this is more especially a Macedonian or Thessalian usage.
