Pelasgians

“ Then he asked Nomion to step on a block of stone, where he could be seen and heard by all.
The young Pelasgian chief had laid aside helmet, armor, spear, and shield. A gold circlet confined his waving black hair, and a white cloak with a broad yellow border fell in graceful folds a little below his knees. All eyes rested with pleasure on the handsome youth.
“Cychreans!” he said in a clear, loud voice, “we Pelasgians have come—if you agree—to conclude peace and form an alliance with you.” ”

“ But the Athenians themselves say that their reason for expelling the Pelasgians was just. The Pelasgians, they say, issued out from their settlement at the foot of Hymettus and dealt wrongfully with the Athenians in this wise: neither the Athenians nor any other dwellers in Hellas had as yet servants at that time, and their sons and daughters resorted to the Nine Wells for water; and whenever they came, the Pelasgians maltreated them out of mere arrogance and pride. Nor yet were they content with so doing, but at last were caught in the act of planning to attack Athens. ”

“ We suppose always that the Pelasgians were Greeks, and spoke the Grecian language: an opinion in support of which we will on this occasion only adduce a few arguments. It must then be borne in mind, that all the races whose migrations took place at a late period, such as the Achæans, Ionians, Dorians, were not (the last in particular) sufficiently powerful or numerous to effect a complete change in the customs [pg 007] of a barbarous population;26 that many districts, Arcadia and Perrhæbia, for instance, remained entirely Pelasgic, without being inhabited by any nation not of Grecian origin ”

“ What language the Pelasgians spoke I cannot accurately say. But if one may judge by those that still remain of the Pelasgians who dwell above the Tyrrheni in the city of Creston—who were once neighbours of the people now called Dorians, and at that time inhabited the country which now is called Thessalian—and of the Pelasgians who inhabited Placia and Scylace on the Hellespont, who came to dwell among the Athenians, and by other towns too which were once Pelasgian and afterwards took a different name:—if (I say) one may judge by these, the Pelasgians spoke a language which was not Greek. ”

“ In attempting to illustrate the relations of Pelasgians to Hellenes through the medium of the affinities and contrasts between the Greek and Latin languages, I am aware that I venture upon ground which requires to be trodden with great circumspection. For the Latin nation may possibly have contained within itself some ethnical element not dissimilar to the Hellenic, as well as one substantially corresponding with the Pelasgian, factor of the Greek people. ”

“ But when the Pelasgians had slain their own sons and the women, their land brought forth no fruit, nor did their wives and their flocks and herds bear offspring as before. Under stress of hunger and childlessness they sent to Delphi to ask for some way of release from their present ills; and the Pythian priestess bidding them pay the Athenians whatsoever penalty the Athenians themselves should adjudge, the Pelasgians went to Athens and offered to pay the penalty for all their wrong-doing. ”

“ And since the Iliad furthermore mentions a river Minyos in the later Triphylia, the Minyæ were placed there also.
The Pelasgians play a much more important part in the conventional primitive history of Greece than the last-mentioned peoples. Throughout antiquity their name is connected with the western part of the great Thessalian plain, the “Pelasgic Argos” of Homer, the Pelasgiotis of historic times. ”

“ According to their own account (which is confirmed by the Hellenes) , the Pelasgians, under the leadership of Melkarth-Ouso, came into Libya, but afterwards retreated to the east. Then came the great convulsion when the land was upheaved and the waters receded, and the earth subsided into its present configuration; then, too, the Sidonians, protected by their gods, began to assert their sovereignty on the sea, and sending forth ships to every region of the world, opened emporiums of commerce, discovered mines, founded cities, taught the art of writing, and disseminated knowledge of every kind. ”

“ Wherever within the circle of the Ægean Sea the name of Larissa occurs, there Pelasgians are said to have lived—in the Peloponnesian Argos, in Æolis of Asia Minor, on the island of Lesbos, on the Cayster near Ephesus. It is possibly for this reason that the Odyssey places Pelasgians in Crete, since there, also, there was a Larissæan field near Hierapytna, and Gortyn is said to have been called Larissa in ancient times. From Argos the Pelasgians also became woven into the myths of the neighbouring Arcadia, the ancestral hero of which, Lycaon, is called by Hesiod a son of Pelasgus. ”

“ This portion of the Pelasgians called themselves Rasena, the Greeks spoke of them as Tyrseni, a name evidently connected with the Greek τυρρις or τυρσις (Latin, Turris,) and which remarkably confirms the assertion of Herodotus, since the only Pelasgians who were famed for architecture or tower-building, were those who claimed a Lydian extraction, namely, the Argives and Etruscans. [15] This theory of the Pelasgian origin of the Etruscans is due to Lepsius, [16] and has been adopted by Donaldson ”

“ A Pelasgian fortification, a constant tradition that Athens was inhabited by Pelasgians—we seem to be on solid ground. Yet on a closer examination the evidence for connecting the name of the fortification with the name ‘Pelasgian’ crumbles. In the one official [39] inscription that we possess the word is written, not Pelasgikon, but Pelargikon. In like manner, in Thucydides [40] , where the word occurs twice, it is written with an r. Pelargikon is ‘stork-fort,’ not Pelasgian fort. The confusion probably began with Herodotus, who was specially interested in the Pelasgians. ”

“ We who place the origin of the Pelasgian far beyond the Biblical ditch of historic chronology, have reasons to believe that the "barbarous language" mentioned by Herodotus was simply "the primitive and now extinct Aryan tongue" that preceded the Vedic Sanskrit. Who could they be, these Pelasgians? They are described generally on the meagre data in hand as a highly intellectual, receptive, active and simple people, chiefly occupied with agriculture; warlike when necessary, though preferring peace. ”

“ In Argolis Proetus built Tiryns, but later, under Perseus, Mycenae took the lead until the Achaean conquest. All the ancient dynasties traced their descent from Poseidon, who at the time of the Achaean conquest was the chief male divinity of Greece and the islands. The Pelasgians probably spoke an Indo-European language adopted by their conquerors with slight modifications. (See further Pelasgians for a discussion of other views.) ”

“ The Athenians, by their own showing, dealt so much more rightly than the Pelasgians, that when they might have killed them, caught plotting as they were, they would not so do but bade them depart out of the country. ”

“ The range and importance of the Pelasgians are most strictly limited by J. L. Myres [1092] , who thinks that the Alpine type may even be primitive in the Morea, Mediterranean man being an intruder from the south merely fringing the coast and never penetrating inland. The researches of von Luschan in Lycia support this view [1093] , and Ripley's map of the present inhabitants of the Balkan peninsula shows the "Greek contingent closely confined to the sea-coast [1094] ." ”

“ In support of this opinion, it may be stated that there were towns bearing the Pelasgic name of Larissa, both near the Hermus and near the Mæander: Menekratês of Elæa considered the Pelasgians as having once occupied most part of that coast; [p. 180] and O. Müller even conceives the Tyrrhenians to have been Pelasgians from Tyrrha, a town in the interior of Lydia south of Tmôlus. The point is one upon which we have not sufficient evidence to advance beyond conjecture. [304]
Of the Ionic towns, with which our real knowledge of Asia Minor begins, Milêtus [305] was the most powerful ”

“ The fact that he was not enslaved, suggests it as most probable, that there were no slaves in the Thesprotian country: which would entirely accord with the position of the Pelasgians, as themselves not the conquerors of a race that had preceded them, but the first inhabitants of the spots they occupied in the Greek peninsula. The richness of their country is further in harmony with the account of Egypt, and with their addiction to agricultural pursuits. ”

“ Along the western shores of this great peninsula were Pelasgians, Mysians, Bythinians, Phrygians, Lydians, and other nations, before the Greeks established their colonies. Further eastward were Lycians, Pisidians, Phrygians, Cappadocians, Paphlagonians, and others. The Phrygians, Mysians, and Teucrians were on the northwest. These various nations were not formed into large kingdoms or confederacies, nor even into large cities, but were inconsiderable tribes, that presented no formidable resistance to external enemies. ”

“ Sometimes the Pelasgians seem to be spoken of simply as Old-Hellênes, sometimes as a people distinct from the Hellênes. ♦The Greek nation.♦ Whether the Hellênes, on their entering into Greece, found the land held by earlier inhabitants, whether Aryan or non-Aryan, is a curious and interesting speculation, but one which does not concern us. It is enough for our purpose that, as far back as history or even legend can carry us, we find the land in the occupation of a branch of the Aryan family, consisting, like all other nations, of various kindred tribes. ”

“ In the Supplices the king of the Pelasgians, who is beset by the daughters of Danaus with the twofold claim of kinsfolk and suppliants, and besought to deliver them from the lust and violence of their pursuers, acknowledges himself in a sore strait. If he rescue his suppliants, he may involve his people in war ”

“ PELASGIANS, a name applied by Greek writers to a prehistoric people whose traces were believed to exist in Greek lands. If the statements of ancient authorities are marshalled in order of their date it will be seen that certain beliefs cannot be traced back beyond the age of this or that author. ”

“ We should, at least, expect to find a Pelasgian background to the Homeric picture. As a matter of fact, we find nothing of the sort. There is no consciousness in the Homeric poems of a distinction of race between the governing and the subject classes. There are, indeed, Pelasgians in Homer, but the references either to the people or the name are extraordinarily few. They appear as a people, presumably in Asia Minor, in alliance with the Trojans; they appear also, in a single passage, as one of the tribes inhabiting Crete. ”

“ The Mycenaean civilization he attributes to the Pelasgians, whom he regards as the indigenous population of Greece, the ancestors of the later Greeks, and themselves Greek both in speech and blood. The Homeric heroes are Achaeans, a fair-haired Celtic race, whose home was in the Danube valley, where they had learned the use of iron. In Greece they are newcomers, a conquering class comparable to the Norman invaders of England or Ireland, and like them they have acquired the language of their subjects in the course of a few generations. ”

“ Of the early character of the Pelasgians, and of the degree of civilization to which they had attained before the reputed founding of Argos, we have unsatisfactory and conflicting accounts. On the one hand, they are represented as no better than the rudest barbarians, dwelling in caves, subsisting on reptiles, herbs, and wild fruits, and strangers to the simplest arts of civilized life. Other and more reliable traditions, however, attribute to them a knowledge of agriculture, and some little acquaintance with navigation ”

“ Two other passages (Iliad, ii 681–684, xvi. 233–235) apply the epithet “Pelasgic” to a district called Argos about Mt Othrys in south Thessaly, and to Zeus of Dodona. But in neither case are actual Pelasgians mentioned, the Thessalian Argos is the specific home of Hellenes and Achaeans, and Dodona is inhabited by Perrhaebians and Aenianes (Iliad, ii. 750) who are nowhere described as Pelasgian. It looks therefore as if “Pelasgian” were here used connotatively, to mean either “formerly occupied by Pelasgian” or simply “of immemorial age.” ”

“ Herodotus had said that certain Pelasgians living in his time spoke a language different from the Greeks. Dr Thirlwall puts the passage of Herodotus upon the rack to extract from it a confession that the difference was not [Pg 136] greater than between one dialect of Greek from another. Yet, as the narrative proceeds—if narrative it can be called—we have the Pelasgians and the Greeks represented as essentially distinct people; and we hear of the difficulty of determining "the precise point of civilisation to which the Pelasgians had advanced, before the Greeks overtook and outstripped them." ”

“ While their rude and filthy habits of life mark them as probably a people of recent arrival, who had not themselves yet emerged from their highland home, and from the struggle with want and difficulty, into civilized life, still they had begun to encroach upon the Pelasgians with their inviting possessions and more settled habits, and had acquired by force or otherwise the control of the temple, though without obliterating the tradition of its Pelasgic origin. ”

“ It is now pretty well established that the Greek population of the classical age was an incomplete blend of two of the three great European stocks, namely Homo Europaeus, the northern, fair, long-headed type of tall stature, and of H. Mediterraneus, the short dark long-headed type of the Mediterranean coast lands. The Pelasgians, who, as we now know, had achieved a civilisation of a type that was widely spread through southern Europe as long as three thousand years or more before our era, seem to have been of this Mediterranean race. ”