2. A more extended country? First let us remark the use of the article. It is not the manner of Homer to employ the article with the proper names of places. We may be sure that it carries with it a distinctive force: as in the Trojan Catalogue he employs it to indicate a particular race or body of Pelasgians[128] apart from others. Now the distinctive force of the article here may have either or both of two bearings. 1. It may mark off the Argos of the Pelasgians from one or more other countries or places bearing the name of Argos. 2. Even independently of the epithet, the article may be rightly employed, if Argos itself be not strictly a proper name, but rather a descriptive word indicating the physical character of a given region. Thus ‘Scotland’ is strictly a proper name, ‘Lowlands’ a descriptive word of this nature: and the latter takes the article where the former does not require or even admit it. And now let us proceed to make our selection between the various alternatives before us. Whichever of the two bearings we give to the article, it seems of itself to preclude the supposition that a mere town or single settlement can be here intended: for nowhere does Homer give the article to a name of that class. Secondly, in almost every place where Homer speaks of an Argos, he makes it plain that he does not mean a mere town or single settlement, but a country including towns or settlements within it. The exceptions to this rule are rare. In Il. iv. 52 we have one of them, where he combines Argos with Sparta and Mycenæ, and calls all three by the name of cities. The line Il. ii. 559 probably supplies another. But in a later Section[129] the general rule will be fully illustrated. It will also clearly appear, that the name Argos is in fact a descriptive word, not a proper name, and is nearly equivalent to our ‘Lowlands’ or to the Italian ‘campagna.’ Thirdly: in many other places of the Catalogue, Homer begins by placing in the front, as it were, the comprehensive name which overrides and includes the particular names that are to follow; and then, without any other distinctive mark than the use of the faint enclitic copulative τε, proceeds to enumerate parts included within the whole which he has previously named. Thus for instance οἱ δ’ Εὔβοιαν ἔχον ... Χαλκίδα τ’ Εἰρετρίαν τε κ.τ.λ. v. 535, 6. ‘Those who held Eubœa, both Chalcis and Eretria’.... Or in the English idiom we may perhaps write more correctly, ‘Those who held Eubœa, that is to say Chalcis, and Eretria’ ... and the rest. Again, οἱ δ’ εἶχον κοιλὴν Λακεδαίμονα κητώεσσαν Φᾶρίν τε Σπάρτην τε ... v. 581, 2. ‘Those who held channelled Laconia, abounding in wild beasts, namely, the several settlements of Pharis and Sparta,’ and the rest. So with Arcadia, v. 603, and Ithaca, v. 631. We may therefore consider the verse 681, Νῦν αὖ τοὺς, ὅσσοι τὸ Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος ἔναιον· as prefatory, and I print it, accordingly, so as to mark a pause.