There is evidence that the name had not exhausted its elasticity even after Homer’s time. In later ages we find an Argos of Orestis in Macedonia; an Argos of Amphilochia in Western Greece; an Argos near Larissa in Thessaly[665], and other cases more remote. Nothing but a geographical force still adhering to the word will account for this extension. The same is the inference to be drawn from the epithets and quasi-epithets, or descriptive phrases, applied to it by Homer. With the exception of one passage, where he gives it the political epithet[666] κλυτὸν, they are all physical; being ἱππόβοτον, πολυδίψιον, πολύπυρον, and οὖθαρ ἀρούρης. Of these four epithets, the first is in Homer peculiarly connected with the specific form and character of the country: accordingly, while it is the standing epithet of Argos, being used with it eleven times out of only fifteen in which the word has any epithet or quasi-epithet attached to it, it is never found with Achæis, or with Hellas. And the proof of its physically descriptive character lies in the passage where Telemachus gives to Menelaus an account of Ithaca; ἐν δ’ Ἰθάκῃ οὔτ’ ἀρ’ δρόμοι εὔρεες, οὔτε τι λείμων· αἰγίβοτος, καὶ μᾶλλον ἐπήρατος ἱπποβότοιο[667]. The ἱππόβοτος of Homer, again, does not point merely to fertility, but also to labour and its results; not merely to pasture, but also to grain, for the horses of Homer are fed on this as well as on herbage, κρῖ λευκὸν ἐρεπτόμενοι καὶ ὀλεύρας[668]. Now, in referring the word Ἄργος to a common root and significancy with ἔργον, we are not bound to hold that it attains its initial vowel by junction with the particle ἀ used in its intensive sense. For we have the word, and also its derivatives, in this form, coming down to us from the old Greek. Among the four tribes of Attica which subsisted until the time of Cleisthenes[669], one was that of the Ἄργαδες or husbandmen: and in the Elian inscription supposed to date about the Fortieth Olympiad[670], or more than 600 years B. C., we have the very word ἔργον in the form ἄργον, with the digamma, in a passage which I copy, ΑΙΤΕϜΕΠΟΣ ΑΙΤΕϜΑΡΓΟΝ This inscription, says the Article in the _Museum Criticum_, is of older date than any other which has either been brought in copy from Greece, or is to be found on the marbles. The matter of it is a public treaty, between the Elians and some of their neighbours, concluded for an hundred years. Another good example of the interchange of the vowels α and ε is in the word ἀρόω, which it is obvious to derive from ἔρα, the earth. In the Latin we see both forms preserved, the one in _aro_ to plough, the other in _sero_ to sow. And this latter suggests the derivation of the Greek σπείρω from a similar source.