Yet it sets us thinking whether a town in Western Europe, five or six hundred years back, may not have looked much the same. In one point indeed there was a difference. No Western mediæval town of the same population as modern Argos would have spread over the same space. That is to say, the modern town lies scattered, doubtless because it represents an ancient city of far greater extent. But the objects which give Argos its main interest in the eyes of the historical inquirer, the objects which bear witness to the existence of Argos in the days of its greatness, lie outside the modern town. One, the chief of all, proclaims its presence from afar. The akropolis of Argos, the famous Larissa, the soaring height crowned by the stronghold which from a primæval fortress grew into a modern castle, is an akropolis in quite another sense than the lowlier hill of Tiryns, or even than that of Athens. The name leads to a long train of thought. It is the Larissa of Argos. How many spots bear the name of Larissa? How many lands and cities bear the name of Argos? He who has a taste for Pelasgian speculation has a wide field opened to him. He who keeps himself within the range of recorded history and of such tradition as may be said to prove itself, may perhaps be led to think how largely the fame of Argos is a borrowed fame. Argos and the Argeians meet us in every page of the Homeric tale; they seem to be the most familiar names for Greece and the Greeks before Greece and the Greeks had as yet an acknowledged common name. A little thought will, however, show that in most of the places where they are named there is no immediate reference to the local city of Argos. The Bretwalda of Hellas ruled over many islands and over all Argos. Whatever this means, it can hardly mean anything short of all Peloponnêsos; at least it cannot mean the local Argos, which did not come within his immediate kingdom. To suppose any reference to the local Argos would be like quartering a Karling at Paris or a West-Saxon at York. But the local Argos dealt with Mykênê like the savage who swallows the eye of his slain enemy in order to take to himself his strength, courage, and glory. Only a few years after Mykênê fell we find the Attic dramatists transferring the whole tale of Pelops’ line from its own place to the destroying city. The confusion has become hopeless. Argos becomes surrounded by a mythical glory to which it has no claim. The name of Argos brings up a crowd of associations, most of which it is our first duty to drive back. We must remember that Agamemnôn--we take the personal name to express the fact of the Mykênaian empire--was lord of the local Argos only in the sense in which he was lord of any other spot in Peloponnêsos. The two neighbouring cities were the heads, as the Catalogue shows us, of two kingdoms of strangely irregular shape, but whose very shape is the sign that the geography is genuine. No inventor could have hit on anything