7.

The greater part of the city of the Argives is situated in a plain. It has a citadel called Larisa, a hill moderately fortified, and upon it a temple of Jupiter. Near it flows the Inachus, a torrent river; its source is in Lyrceium [the Arcadian mountain near Cynuria]. We have said before that the fabulous stories about its sources are the inventions of poets; it is a fiction also that Argos is without water—

“but the gods made Argos a land without water.”

Now the ground consists of hollows, it is intersected by rivers, and is full of marshes and lakes; the city also has a copious supply of water from many wells, which rises near the surface.

They attribute the mistake to this verse,

“and I shall return disgraced to Argos (πολυδίψιον) the very thirsty.”184

This word is used for πολυπόθητον, or

“much longed after,”

or without the δ for πολυίψιον, equivalent to the expression πολύφθορον in Sophocles,

“this house of the Pelopidæ abounding in slaughter,”185

[for προϊάψαι and ἰάψαι and ἴψασθαι, denote some injury or destruction;

“at present he is making the attempt, and he will soon destroy (ἴψεται) the sons of the Achæi;”186

and again, lest

“she should injure (ἰάψῃ) her beautiful skin;”187

and,

“has prematurely sent down, προΐαψεν, to Ades.”188]189

Besides, he does not mean the city Argos, for it was not thither that he was about to return, but he meant Peloponnesus, which, certainly, is not a thirsty land.

With respect to the letter δ, they introduce the conjunction by the figure hyperbaton, and make an elision of the vowel, so that the verse would run thus,

that is, πολυίψιον Ἄργοσδε ἱκοίμην, instead of, εἰς Ἄργος.