Pelasium

“ Ephorus, relying on Hesiodic tradition of an aboriginal Pelasgian type in Arcadia, elaborated a theory of the Pelasgians as a warrior people spreading (like “Aryans”) from a “Pelasgian home,” and annexing and colonizing all the parts of Greece where earlier writers had found allusions to them, from Dodona to Crete and the Troad, and even as far as Italy, where again their settlements had been recognized as early as the time of Hellanicus, in close connexion once more with “Tyrrhenians.” ”

“ 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 our subtlest hypotheses can erect only a fabric of doubt, which, while it is tempting to assault, it is useless to defend. All that it seems to me necessary to say of the Pelasgi is as follows:—They are the earliest race which appear to have exercised a dominant power in Greece. Their kings can be traced by tradition to a time long prior to the recorded genealogy of any other tribe, and Inachus, the father of the Pelasgian Phoroneus, is but another name for the remotest era to which Grecian chronology can ascend [4] . ”

“ It may still doubtless be urged that all these things are Pelasgic, and were the customs of a race settled in Hellas before the arrival of the Homeric Achæans, and Dorians, and Argives, who, on this hypothesis, adopted and kept up the old savage Pelasgian ways and superstitious. It is impossible to prove or disprove this belief, nor does it affect our argument. "We allege that all Greek life below the surface was rich in institutions now found among the most barbaric peoples. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The process which we thus seem to see going forward in the Pelasgian countries, and which was probably further exemplified in the Greek migrations to the coast of Asia Minor, was grounded in the natural, if we mean by the natural the ordinary, course of things. In the last century, John Wesley said, that the religious and orderly habits of his followers would make them wealthy, and that then their wealth would destroy their religion. So in all likelihood it was the peaceful habits of the Pelasgians that made their settlements attractive to the spoiler. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Persian harried them, Perikles left them to lie beneath his feet, yet their antique loveliness is untouched and still sovran. They are alive, waiting still, in hushed, intent expectancy—but not for us. We go out from their presence as from a sanctuary, and henceforth every stone of the Pelasgian fortress where they dwelt is, for us, sacred. ”

“ In fact the co-existence, or even the conflict, of the old Pelasgian and the newer Achaean religions is constantly recognised in ancient literature, and to the Pelasgian is ascribed all that most touched men’s hearts, be it with awe or with pity—with awe as in the conflict between the Erinyes and the new dynasty of gods whom Apollo and Athene represent, with pity in the dolorous struggle of Prometheus against the tyrant Zeus. The Pelasgian religion, with all its horrors, drew the real sympathies of the mystic Aeschylus ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The precise nature of the Pelasgian cult of the Erinnyes in Homeric Greece is rather difficult to define. In the Pelasgian religion there was but a small and indescribable difference between ghosts and gods, between minor deities and greater deities. It is probable that the Pelasgians practised, occasionally, Olympian ritual—for instance, at public festivals and in civic worship; but in the local domestic worship of the clan, the phratry, and the tribe, their placation of ancestors gave a predominantly Chthonian tone to their whole religious outlook. ”

“ Their pursuits were agricultural; hence they occupy the richest soils: hence Pelasgus is the host of [201] Ceres, and the inventor of bread: hence Tyrrhenian Pelasgi convert the stony ground by Hymettus into fruitful fields. The shepherd life of the Pelasgians is an Arcadian tradition, but Arcadia was not their only original seat, and, when displaced by Achæans and Dorians, they may have been driven to the hills. Such seats we find in Argos, Achaia, Peloponnesus generally, Thessalia, Epirus, and Attica, where they may be traced in the division of the tribes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If we are to venture yet one step further back, and ask to what extraneous race and country do the Pelasgic [149] ages of Greece appear particularly to refer us as their type, the answer, as it would seem, though it can only be given with reserve, must be, that Egypt and its people appear most nearly to supply the pattern. A variety of notes, indicative of affinity, are traceable at a variety of points where we find reason to suspect a Pelasgian character: particularly in Troy, and in the early Roman history, more or less in Hesiod and his school, and in certain parts of Greece. ”

“ That all the Pelasgi—scattered throughout Greece, divided among themselves—frequently at war with each other, and certainly in no habits of peaceful communication—each tribe of different modes of life, and different degrees of civilization, should have concurred in giving no names to their gods, and then have equally concurred in receiving names from Egypt, is an assertion so preposterous, that it carries with it its own contradiction. ”

“ From various observations, it is plain that the Etrurians represented a stage of civilization far in advance of the Pelasgians who founded Rome—a race which, although superior in numbers, arms, and influence, were, when compared with this more ancient people, little better than barbarians. ”

“ But the natural tendency of the human mind to error soon disturbed the simplicity of their faith; for as the tribes separated, each taking a different direction, they all in turns learned to consider the God as their patron, so that speedily there were as many gods as tribes, and polytheism was created. Thus the Pelasgi, who had at first like the polished nations of modern times no name for the gods, because they believed in but one, degenerated in the course of time, and invented that system of divinities and heroes which afterwards prevailed in Greece. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The worship of Vesta survived an old world of exhausted craters and extinct volcanoes, with which was buried a world of lost nations. The Pelasgians brought to Italy the stone of the domestic hearth, the foundation of the family, and the tombstone, the boundary of the fields divided after the death of the head of the family, the foundation of property; and upon this double base arose the great distinctive edifice of the Roman Law, the special gift of Rome to the civilisation of the world. ”

“ Now as these women bore more and more children, they taught their sons the speech of Attica and Athenian manners. These boys would not consort with the sons of the Pelasgian women; if one of themselves were beaten by one of the others, they would all run to his aid and help each other; nay, the Athenian-bred boys even claimed to rule the others, and were much the stronger than they. When the Pelasgians perceived that, they took counsel together ”

“ The Pelagians were the followers of Pelagius, a British monk who settled in Rome towards the year 400, and his heresy at least was founded upon rational grounds. He denied the doctrine of original sin, maintained that every human being was born in a state of innocency, and that his perseverance in virtue depended upon himself. He found numerous followers, and for twenty years the conflict raged between Pelagians and the Church, until Pope Zosimus declared against them and banished Pelagius from Rome. ”

“ On the continent of Greece, when the revolution became complete, the Pelasgi appear to have retained only Arcadia, the greater part of Thessaly [72] , the land of Dodona, and Attica.
There is no reason to suppose the Hellenes more enlightened and civilized than the Pelasgi; but they seem, if only by the record of their conquests, to have been a more stern, warlike, and adventurous branch of the Grecian family. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”