xv. 80, when Telemachus has proposed to return home forthwith from

the court of Menelaus, his host gently dissuades him from haste, and counsels a more extended tour, καθ’ Ἑλλάδα καὶ μέσον Ἄργος; offering to take charge of his horses, and to shew him ‘the cities,’ or secured dwellings, ‘of men.’

The signification of the word Ἄργος will be considered hereafter: for the present purpose it is enough to observe that the word μέσον, as used by Menelaus, in combination with Hellas, of itself prevents our applying it simply to the narrow corner of the Peloponnesus in which the city of Argos was placed; and therefore that it can scarcely mean less than Peloponnesus. And it is not less plain, that whatever may be the force of the words when taken singly, their effect when taken together can hardly be less than this: Menelaus must mean to point to Greece at large, as the scene of the proposed excursion. For there is no assignable portion of Greece to which, consistently with the words and the sense, he can be held to confine his meaning. If we could suppose him to mean Peloponnesus only by the two names Hellas and Argos, which he employs in this place, we should but enlarge thereby the Homeric capacity of the word Hellas; for we have already brought it down from the north to Bœotia; and we should, in the way now proposed, carry it through the isthmus, and over Peloponnesus, or, at the least, over some part of it. But even if Menelaus means Peloponnesus only, which is most improbable, it is plainly incredible that such should be the meaning of Penelope in Od. i. 344. As a Greek, she _cannot_ mean to limit the renown of her husband to any sphere less wide than Greece.

We have already seen, that Hellas sometimes includes certainly the territory from Southern Thessaly to Bœotia, and probably Thessaly at large: and it is quite plain that, if it comes to Bœotia, it does not stop there, but applies to the whole of Middle Greece, the region between Thessaly and the isthmus: for the application of the term Hellas could not stop except at some great natural division of the country, and the isthmus is here the only one possible.

Now the name Argos is related to Thessaly[500], but much more specially related to the Peloponnesus, as we shall see from a number of passages. It has no relation at all in Homer to that division of the country in particular which we call Middle Greece.

Assuming it, then, to mean Peloponnesus, in that case Hellas means Middle with Northern Greece: and the two names of Hellas and Argos, taken together, completely and conveniently express the whole country. The only alterations are such as would assign to Hellas a larger sense; in no case can it, as to this passage, admit of a more restricted one.

The foregoing argument is supported to a certain extent by the fact, that while territorial names are frequent for the Peloponnesian part of Greece, (we have Achaic Argos, Iasian Argos, Elis, Arcadia, Lacedæmon,) the continent to the north of the isthmus is generally without territorial names: Phthia and Pelasgic Argos are, I think, the only exceptions. There is thus before us a gap, which the name Hellas, as it has been here construed, seems conveniently to fill.

This construction of certain passages, in which the word Hellas is contained, is not one which should be adopted by the reader unawares. But if, like myself, after examining into it strictly he assents to its justice and necessity, then he will find that it is of the utmost importance to the elucidation of Homeric history; for it supplies a key to other much contested uses of the Hellenic name.

In the first place, I submit that if we now review the ten passages in which Homer speaks of Hellas, and bear in mind that in some among them it cannot be construed as meaning less than, with a certain amount of indeterminateness as to boundaries, Northern and Middle Greece generally, we shall also find, that there is not one of all those passages, in which it will not at least admit of the same sense. I do not deny that it is open to us to hold that the Hellas, in which Chalcon dwelt, was a mere district of Thessaly, and that Homer attaches in different places different senses to the word. But if there is a sense, substantially one, which will suit the word in every place where it is used, it seems most reasonable to adhere generally to that sense. Such a meaning we have, I think, found for Hellas, in concluding that it is used to signify Northern and Middle Greece. In this sense it overrides and includes Phthia, as France overrides Alsace or Burgundy. But as there was a time when Alsace and Burgundy might, before the present state of incorporation, have been either said to be in France or not in France, without an outrageous license of speech either way, so perhaps the land of Phthia was for Homer either a part of Hellas, or a province carved out of Hellas by the special occupation of the Myrmidons, as occasion might chance to demand. Not that he did not conform to the facts, but that the facts were themselves indeterminate. To our habits, under which every inch of ground belongs to somebody, this indefiniteness is wholly strange; but in times when only spots here and there were appropriated, and there was no universal occupation, it was thoroughly natural, and the thing really strange would be the absence of it. Accordingly, when Phœnix says he left Hellas, he gives to Phthia, the name of the place he reached, its exclusive force. When he says Chalcon dwelt in Hellas among the Myrmidons, he probably means in Phthia, but now regards Phthia as covered by the larger designation. When Homer tells us the soldiers of Achilles were those who inhabited Alos, and Alope, and Trachin, and who occupied Phthia and Hellas, we understand by the three first, particular spots which the Myrmidons had settled, by Phthia a larger district which they had so far dotted with their occupancy as to make it peculiarly theirs, and by Hellas the surrounding country, into which they had more or less ramified.

Assuming then the sense of the word Hellas to be now sufficiently ascertained, the next question is, how came this country, which has been described, to bear the name of Hellas? And the question admits of but one answer. It could only be called Hellas because tribes of Helli had become its masters, its governing race, the depositaries, through its various regions, of political and military power.

We must therefore understand that, according to Homer, tribes reputed to be of Hellic origin were so far distributed over this country, as to have begun at least to affix their name to it: though without having absolutely effaced every older name, like Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος and though not precluding the introduction of names perhaps more recent, certainly more specific, such as Phthia.

_The Hellenes of Homer._

We may now proceed to consider the force, according to Homer’s use, of the names derived from Hellas. These are, as commonly understood,

1. Ἕλληνες,

2. Πανέλληνες,

and to these I shall presume to add,

3. Κεφάλληνες.

The first of these is found only in Il. ii. 684. Here, after the description of the places from which the forces of Achilles came, the poet proceeds to give them their designation:

Μυρμίδονες δὲ καλεῦντο καὶ Ἕλληνες καὶ Ἀχαιοί.

We find an exclusive use[501] of the word Myrmidons for the force of Achilles throughout the Iliad, except in this one place; notwithstanding that Phœnix, who was lord of the Dolopes, commanded one of the five divisions[502], and that we may therefore presume a certain part of the force to have been Dolopian. From this exclusive use, we cannot doubt that the name of Myrmidons was that which appertained to them in particular, as the ruling tribe among the subjects of Peleus.

Had we found reason to construe the word Ἕλλας in the preceding line as meaning only a district of his dominions, it would have followed, that Ἕλληνες meant the inhabitants of that district; and that a part of the soldiers of Achilles were Hellenes rather than Myrmidons, in virtue of a local name. But it follows from what we have already concluded about Hellas, that the name of Hellenes was applicable to all the Myrmidons as being themselves inhabitants of Hellas, that is, of Phthia, which belonged to Hellas.

And in passing it should be noticed that, although the Myrmidons inhabited Phthia, they are never called Phthians; nor do we ever hear of Phthians at all in Homer, except only in that passage where they are described as engaged with Locrians and others in repelling the Trojan assault[503]. They are there described as under the command of Medon and Podarces. But in the Catalogue Podarces and Medon[504], as substitutes for Protesilaus and Philoctetes respectively, command the second and fourth Thessalian contingents, which came from districts lying near the kingdom of Peleus. Either therefore the Phthian name extended beyond the limits of Phthia, or the Phthians were those whom the Myrmidons had recently driven out, and whose lands they had occupied.

We cannot conclusively settle the sense of the word Ἀχαιοὶ in this passage, except by anticipating the results of an examination, on which we have not yet entered. But it may be observed even at this point, that the bearings of the passage are somewhat adverse to a merely local construction for it. If Myrmidon was the strictly proper name, then Achæan must have been a designation which was not proper to the Myrmidons only, but which they enjoyed in common with others. And yet, on the other hand, not in common with all the Greeks, but in some sense more restricted than that, in which it is habitually applied to the whole army. For in that large and general sense every contingent of the army was Achæan, and Homer would certainly therefore not have mentioned the Achæan name with respect to one in particular. It can hardly escape observation that, studying great clearness and precision in the Catalogue, he systematically avoids the introduction of his general names for the army. We never read of Danaans or Argeians in it at all, and of Achæans only twice[505]. So far then as the passage itself guides us, it points to the supposition that those who were called Myrmidons properly, to distinguish them from all others, and Hellenes because they were (in common with others) inhabitants of Hellas, belonged likewise to a particular class or race of Greeks, to whom the name of Ἀχαιοὶ was applicable in some distinctive sense. The three appellations, accordingly, are not so many synonyms; but each has probably its own proper scope.

Thucydides[506] speaks with his usual accuracy, when he says that Homer has given the name of Hellenes to no portion of the army except the troops of Achilles from Phthiotis. He does not however go beyond the assertion that this word had not yet grown into an appellation for the Greeks universally, an assertion which, as far as Homer’s evidence goes, is undeniable. But it does not require us also to deny that the Hellas of Homer extends beyond Phthia, and that the name of Hellenes may even then have been beginning to attach to the inhabitants of other parts of Hellas, though perhaps less fixedly, as yet, than to the Myrmidons.

_The Panhellenes of Homer._

With these facts in view, I am wholly unable to follow those who have condemned, upon internal evidence, that verse of the Catalogue in which we find mention of the Panhellenes.

Speaking of Oilean Ajax, commander of the Locrians, the poet says (Il.