Argos

a city in Greece located on the Peloponnesus. The population in 1966 was 13,200.

Argos was settled during the Early Bronze Age at the beginning of the second millennium B.C. During the 15th-14th centuries B.C., Argos was one of the centers of the Achaean Confederacy. After conquest by the Dorians in the 12th—11th centuries B.C., Argos became the center of Argolis and competed with Sparta for supremacy in the Peloponnesus. In the seventh century B.C., Pheidon, the tyrant of Argos, extended his power over a considerable part of the Peloponnesus; he was the first in Greece to begin minting silver coins. During the Greco-Persian Wars (500–449 B.C.) Argos maintained neutrality. In the fifth century B.C. it became a very large center for the slave trade, with an emerging democratic structure. In the second half of the fourth century B.C., Argos fell under Macedonian domination, and in 229 B.C. it joined the Achaean League. From 146 B.C. the city was under Roman rule, and in 297 and again in 395 A.D. it was devastated by the Goths.

In ancient times Argos was famous for the artistic school that produced such well-known Greek sculptors as Ageladas, Polyclitus, and Polymedes. Excavations at Argos were begun in 1902 by Dutch and French archaeologists. Argos is one of the centers of tourism in Greece.