Sect. III. — Pelasgians Continued: And Certain States Naturalised o… — Studies on Homer by W. E. Gladstone

Sect. III. — Pelasgians Continued: And Certain States Naturalised or Akin to Greece

a. Crete. b. Lycia. c. Cyprus.

Crete and the traditions of Minos.

This appears to be the place for a more full consideration of the testimony of Homer with respect to, probably, the greatest character of early Greek history, and one who cannot be omitted in any inquiry concerning the early Pelasgians of Greece: in as much as they stand in a direct Homeric relation to Crete, of which he was the king.

In the poems of Homer, Minos appears to stand forth as the first great and fixed point of Greek nationality and civilization. He is not indeed so remote from the period of Homer himself as others, even as other Europeans, whom the poet mentions, and whom he connects by genealogy with the Trojan period, particularly the Æolids. But the peculiarities meeting in his case, as compared with most of them, are these:

1. That he is expressly traced upwards as well as downwards.

2. That he is connected with a fixed place as its sovereign.

3. That so much is either recounted or suggested of his character and acts.

4. That the Homeric traditions as to Minos are so remarkably supported from without.

Minos is mentioned, and somewhat largely, in no less than six different passages of the Iliad and Odyssey. Homer has given us a much fuller idea of him, than of the more popular hero Hercules, although he is not named in nearly so many passages; and it is singular, that the more ancient of the two personages is also by much the more historical. Again, the poet has told us more about Minos, although he is of foreign extraction, than he has said about all the rest of the older Greek heroes put together. Of Theseus, Pirithous, Castor, Pollux, Meleager, Perseus, Jason, and the rest, his notices are very few and meagre. In dealing with Homer, I should quote even this fact of the greater amount of his references, which in the case of most other poets would be immaterial, as a strong presumption of the superior historical importance of the person concerned.

Minos, according to Homer, had Jupiter for his father, a Phœnician damsel for his mother, and Rhadamanthus for his younger brother. The name 276 of his mother is not recorded, but Jupiter calls her far-famed. This fame, if due to her beauty, would probably have kept her name alive; but as it has not been preserved, it is more probably a reflection from the subsequent greatness of her son.

The story thus far appears probably to indicate that Minos was a Phœnician by birth, but without a known ancestry, and raised into celebrity by his own energies and achievements.

The mode, by which he rose to fame, was by the government of men and the foundation of civil institutions. At nine years old he received, such is the legend, revelations from Jupiter,277 and reigned, in the great or mighty city (μεγάλη πόλις) of Cnossus, over Crete: such was the form, copied by the politic legislator of Rome, in which a title to veneration was secured for his laws. No other city, besides this capital, is described in Homer by the epithet μεγάλη, or by any equivalent word.

A further vivid mark of his political greatness is afforded us by that passage in the Odyssey, which exhibits him not simply as exercising in the world beneath 278 the mere office of a judge, but rather as discharging there a judicial function in virtue of his sovereignty. Such is the force of the word θεμιστεύειν,279 which signifies rather to give law than to administer it: or, at least, to exercise the function of a king rather than of a judge 280 (ἵστωρ). He is described as still the illustrious son of Jupiter, Διὸς ἀγλαὸς υἱός. Even there he appears not as one of the suffering or bewildered inhabitants of that lower world, but in the exercise of power as an actual ruler among the spirits of the departed;

οἱ δέ μιν ἀμφὶ δίκας εἴροντο ἄνακτα.

He only is invested with any character of this kind. Every other apparition below is either in actual suffering, or gloomy and depressed.

The epithet ὀλοόφρων, applied to Minos in an earlier passage of the Νεκυία, might perhaps convey the same idea as Virgil has rendered by his durissima regna,281 in the description of Rhadamanthus: and we may also compare the address of Menelaus in the Third Iliad to Jupiter,

Ζεῦ πάτερ οὔτις σεῖο θεῶν ὀλοώτερος ἄλλος.282

A reasonable construction would refer the word to the commercial character of the Phœnician people, at once cunning and daring 283; and there is much probability in the opinion of Höck, who interprets the word as meaning ‘exactor of tribute,’ or as alluding to the exaction by Minos of a tribute from Attica 284. On this we shall shortly have to enlarge.

Power of Crete.

As to the family and kingdom of Minos, we should gather in the first place from Homer, that Crete had under him been preeminent in power. He was king of the island (Κρήτῃ ἐπίουρος)285, and he reigned, at the age of nine years only (ἐννέωρος βασίλευε), in Cnossus over the five nations. The island had ninety, or in the rounder numbers, an hundred cities. Two generations had passed since Minos; Idomeneus his grandson did not apparently reign, like Minos himself, over the whole of it: for if this had been the case, it is very improbable, presuming that we may judge by the analogies which the order of the army in general supplies, that Meriones would have been made his associate, which in some manner he is, in the command; and again, the feigned story of Ulysses in the Odyssey, though it introduces Idomeneus, does not represent him as king of the whole island, but rather implies that his pretended brother, Æthon, also exercised a sovereignty there 286. But even then the Cretan contingent, although the towns named as supplying it do not extend over the whole island 287, amounted to eighty ships, and thus exceeded any other, except those of Agamemnon and of Nestor. And then, when Minos had so long been dead, it was still the marked and special distinction of the country, that it was the seat of his race. So Eumæus, describing the disguised stranger to Penelope, says 288,

φησὶ δ’ Ὀδυσσῆος ξεῖνος πατρώïος εἶναι,
Κρήτῃ ναιετάων, ὅθι Μίνωος γένος ἐστίν.

A passage which perhaps testifies that the family of Minos had been ξεῖνοι to the predecessors of Ulysses.

But perhaps there is no country in Greece which Homer so rarely mentions without a laudatory epithet. Though (περίρρυτος) sea-girt, it is not with him an island: it is Κρήτη γαῖα, Κρήτη εὐρεῖα, Κρήτη ἑκατόμπολις 289, and in the principal description, Homer exalts it more highly, I think, than any other territory,

Κρήτη τις γαῖ’ ἐστὶ, μέσῳ ἐνὶ οἴνοπι πόντῳ
καλὴ καὶ πίειρα, περίρρυτος· ἐν δ’ ἄνθρωποι
πολλοὶ, ἀπειέσιοι, καὶ ἐννήκοντα πόληες 290.

If it should be thought that the evidence to the character of Minos as a lawgiver is slight, we must call to mind that even the word law is not found in Homer. The term afterwards used by the Greeks to express what we mean by a law, νόμος, only occurs with Homer in a sense quite different. He tells us of nothing more determinate than δίκαι and θέμιστες. But relatively to his pictures of other governors, the legislatorial character of Minos is as strongly marked as that of Numa is in Livy, relatively to other kings of Rome.

In conclusion, as to the region of Crete, it was inhabited by five races: namely,

1. Ἀχαιοί.
2. Ἐτεοκρῆτες.
3. Κυδῶνες.
4. Δωριέες.
5. Πελάσγοι.

Pelasgianism in Crete.

Of these the Achæans and Dorians are evidently Greek. We are now examining at large the title of the Pelasgi to the same character. With respect to the Cydones, we may draw an inference from the facts, that they lived (Od. iii. 292), on a Cretan river Iardanus, and that this was also the name of a river of Peloponnesus (Il. vii. 133). I should even hold that this stream, which is not identified, was most probably in Arcadia: first, because in the contest with the Hellic tribes of Pylos, the Arcadians as Pelasgians would be on the defensive, and would therefore fight on their own ground: secondly, because the battle was on the ὠκύροος Κελάδων. These words are most suitable to some mountain feeder of the Iardanus, with its precipitate descent, rather than to the usually more peaceful course of a river near the sea, especially near the sea coast of sandy Pylus, which reached to the Alpheus 291. This supposition respecting the Celadon will also best account for what otherwise seems singular; namely, that the battle was at once on the Celadon, and also about the Iardanus (Ἰαρδάνου ἀμφὶ ῥεέθρα 292). Again, the battle was between Arcadians and Pylians, and therefore, from the relative situation of the territories, was probably on some Arcadian feeder of the Alpheus, lying far inland. Now if Iardanus was an Arcadian river, and if the Arcadians were Pelasgi, it leads to a presumption that the Cydonians of Crete, who dwelt upon an Iardanus, were Pelasgian also.

There remain the Ἐτεοκρῆτες, apparently so called, to distinguish them as indigenous from all the other four nations, who were ἐπήλυδες, or immigrant. This is curious, because it refers us elsewhere for the origin of the Pelasgi. It is the only case in which we hear of any thing anterior to them, upon the soils which they occupied. Lastly, Crete lay between Greece and Cyprus, and Cyprus is clearly indicated in the Odyssey as on the route to Egypt 293.

But we hear also of Rhadamanthus as the brother of Minos, of Deucalion as his son, and of Ariadne as his daughter 294. And the notices of these personages in Homer all tend to magnify our conception of his power and his connections.

Theseus, who is glorified by Nestor as a first rate hero 295, and described as a most famous child of the gods 296, whom both Homer, and also the later legends connect with Attica, marries Ariadne, who dies on her way to Athens 297. The marriages of Homer were generally contracted among much nearer neighbours. This more distant connection cannot, I think, but be taken as indicating the extended relations connected with the sovereignty of Minos and his exalted position.

Traditions of Deucalion.

The genealogy of Idomeneus runs thus 298; ‘Jupiter begot Minos, ruler of Crete. Minos begot a distinguished son, Deucalion. Deucalion begot me, a ruler over numerous subjects in broad Crete.’

Here it is to be remarked,

1. That while Minos and Idomeneus, the first and third generations, are described as ruling in Crete, Deucalion of the second is not so described.

2. That Idomeneus is nowhere described as having succeeded to the throne of his grandfather Minos, but only as being a ruler in Crete: and that, as we have seen, from the qualified conjunction of Meriones with him in the command, perhaps also from the limited range of the Cretan towns in the Catalogue, there arises a positive presumption that he had succeeded only to a portion of the ancient preeminence and power of his ancestor.

Now there is no direct evidence in Homer connecting Deucalion with Thessaly. The later tradition, however, places him there: and this tradition may probably claim an authority as old as that of Hesiod. A fragment of that poet 299, with the text partially corrupt, speaks of Locrus, leader of the Leleges, as among those whom Jupiter raised from the earth for Deucalion. This reference to Locrus immediately suggests the name of the Locrian race, and so carries us into the immediate neighbourhood of Thessaly; and the general purport of the words is to express something a little like the later tradition about Deucalion, which had that country for its scene. Combining this with the negative evidence afforded by the Homeric text, we thus find established a communication seemingly direct between Crete under Minos, and Thessaly, to which country we have already found it probable that Deucalion immigrated, and where he may have reigned.

The usual statement is, that the name Deucalion was common to two different persons, one the son of Minos, and the other the king of Thessaly. But we must be upon our guard against the device of the later Greek writers, who at once unravelled the accumulated intricacies that had gradually gathered about their traditions, and enlarged the stock of material for pampering vanity, and exciting the imagination, by multiplying the personages of the early legends. As regards the case now before us; the tradition, which makes Hellen son of the latter of these Deucalions, would certainly make him considerably older than he could be if a son of Minos. It must be admitted, that Homer repeats the name of Deucalion, for a Trojan so called is slain by Achilles in Il. xx. 478. It has pleased the fancy of the poet there to use the names of a number of dead heroes to distinguish the warriors who fell like sheep under the sword of the terrible Achilles: we find among them a Dardanus, a Tros, and a Moulius; and it is so little Homer’s practice to use names without a peculiar meaning, that we may conjecture he has done it, in preference to letting Achilles slaughter a crowd of ignoble persons, in order that in every thing his Protagonist might be distinguished from other men. But the poet seems to take particular care to prevent any confusion as to his great Greek, and indeed as to all his great living, personages. I am not aware of more than one single passage in the Iliad 300, among the multitude in which one or other of the Ajaxes is named, where there can be a doubt which of the two is meant. It is exceedingly unlikely that if a separate Deucalion of Thessaly had been known to Homer, he should not have distinguished him from the Deucalion of Crete. This unlikelihood mounts to incredibility, when we remember (1) that this other Deucalion of Thessaly is nothing less than the asserted root of the whole Hellenic stock, and (2) that the poet repeatedly uses the patronymic Deucalides as an individual appellation for Idomeneus, whereas the adverse supposition would make all the Achæans alike Δευκαλίδαι. We may therefore safely conclude at least, that Homer knew of no Deucalion other than the son of Minos.

Of Rhadamanthus and the Phæacians.

We come now to Rhadamanthus, who is thrice mentioned by Homer. Once 301, as born of the same parents with Minos 302. Once, as enjoying like him honours from Jupiter beyond the term of our ordinary human life: for he is placed amidst the calm and comforts of the Elysian plain. The third passage is remarkable. It is where Alcinous 303 promises Ulysses conveyance to his home, even should it be farther than Eubœa, which the Phæacian mariners consider to be their farthest known point of distance, and whither they had conveyed Rhadamanthus,

ἐποψόμενον Τίτυον, Γαιήιον υἱόν·

on his way to visit, or inspect, or look after, Tityus. This Tityus we find in the νεκυία suffering torture for having attempted violence upon Latona 304, as she was proceeding towards Pytho, through Panopeus. Panopeus was a place in Phocis, on the borders of Bœotia, and on the line of any one journeying between Delos and Delphi.

There is in this legend the geographical indistinctness, and even confusion, which we commonly find where Homer dealt with places lying in the least beyond the range of his own experience or that of his hearers, as was the case with Phæacia. If Tityus was in Panopeus, the proper way to carry Rhadamanthus was by the Corinthian gulf. But from various points in the geography of the Odyssey, it may, in my opinion, be gathered, that Homer had an idea, quite vague and indeterminate as to distance, of a connection by sea between the north of the Adriatic, and the north of the Ægean, either directly, or from the sea of Marmora: and it suited his representation of the Phæacians, and best maintained their as it were aerial character, to give them an unknown rather than a known route. However that might be, if we look into the legend in order to conjecture its historic basis, it appears to suggest the inferences which follow:

1. That according to tradition, the empire or supremacy of Minos, which may in some points have resembled that afterwards held by Agamemnon, embraced both Corcyra and likewise middle Greece, where Panopeus and Pytho or Delphi lay.

We must, however, presume the empire of Minos to have been in great part insular. There were contemporary kingdoms on the mainland, which give no sign of dependence upon it.

2. That the Phæacians acted as subjects of Minos in carrying Rhadamanthus by sea from one part of the dominions of that king to another.

3. That Rhadamanthus went to punish Tityus as an offender within the realm of Minos, and did this on the part and in lieu of Minos himself.

4. That though he was not Greek by birth, his person, and family, and empire were all Greek in the view of Homer.

This conjectural interpretation of the legend derives support from many quarters.

It is in thorough harmony, as to the extended rule of Minos, with the Eleventh Odyssey, which represents Minos as acting in the capacity of a sovereign in the shades below; which also exhibits, as suffering judicially the punishments that he awarded, offenders connected with various portions of Greek territory, and among them this very Tityus.

Minos: post-Homeric tradition.

It is now time to look to the post-Homeric traditions.

The extent of the sway of Minos is supported by the tradition of Pelasgus, in the Supplices of Æschylus 305, which represents the whole country from (probably) Macedonia to the extreme south of the peninsula, as having been formerly under one and the same sway. The empire of Minos may have been magnified into this tradition.

The authority of Thucydides is available for the following points 306:—

1. That Minos was the earliest known possessor of maritime power: thus harmonising with the hypothesis that the Phæacians, whose great distinction was in their nautical character, were acting as his subjects when they carried Rhadamanthus.

2. That his power extended over the Grecian sea, or Ægean (Ἑλληνικὴ θάλασσα) generally (ἐπὶ πλεῖστον); thus indicating a great extent of sway.

3. That he appointed his children to govern his dominions on his behalf (τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ παῖδας ἡγεμόνας ἐγκαταστήσας): which supports the idea that his brother Rhadamanthus may have acted for him at a distance.

4. That he drove the Carians out of the islands of the Ægean. This statement receives remarkable confirmation from Homer, who makes the islands up to the very coast of Caria contributors to the force of the Greek army: while Lesbos and others, situated farther north, and more distant from Crete, appear to have been, like Caria itself, in the Trojan interest.

In the Minos ascribed to Plato 307 we find the tradition of his direct relations with Attica, which were well known to the theatre. This supports the notice in Homer of the marriage contracted between Theseus and his daughter Ariadne.

Aristotle 308, like Thucydides, asserts the maritime power of Minos and his sovereignty over the islands, and adds, that he lost or ended his life in the course of an expedition to conquer Sicily 309.

Herodotus 310, like Thucydides, treats Minos as the first known sovereign who had been powerful by sea. He states, that Minos expelled his brother Sarpedon from Crete, and that Sarpedon with his adherents colonised Lycia, which was governed, down to the time of the historian himself, by laws partly Cretan 311: and he also delivers the tradition that Minos was slain in an expedition against Sicily at Camicus, afterwards Agrigentum. A town bearing his name remained long after in the island.

Euripides laid the scene of his Rhadamanthus in Bœotia: and a Cretan colony is said to have established the Tilphosian temple there 312. Höck finds traces of a marked connection between Crete and that district 313.

Minos: Laconian and Cretan laws.

More important, however, than any isolated facts are the resemblances of the Lacedæmonian and Cretan politics, noticed by Aristotle 314, in combination with the admission always made by the Lacedæmonians, that their lawgiver Lycurgus initiated the Cretan institutions 315, and with the universal Greek tradition that in Crete, first of all parts of Greece, laws and a regular polity had been established by Minos. Again, in the Dialogue printed among the works of Plato, the author of it seeks to establish the fundamental idea of law: puts aside the injurious statements of the tragedians who represented Minos as a tyrant, declares his laws to have been the oldest and the best in Greece, and the models from which the prime parts of the Laconian legislation had been borrowed 316.

Among the resemblances known to us appear to be

1. The division between the military and the agricultural part of the community.

2. The περίοικοι of Crete, holding the same relation to the Cretans, as the Helots to the Spartans, and like them cultivating the land.

3. The institution of συσσίτια in both countries.

4. The organism of the government: the five ephors corresponding with the ten κοσμοὶ of Crete, and the βουλὴ being alike in both.

There also still remain etymological indications that Minos was the person who raised some tribe or class to preeminence in Crete, and depressed some other tribes or classes below the level of the free community. In Hesychius we read,

μνοῖα, οἰκετεία.
μνῆτοι, δοῦλοι.
μνῶα, δουλεία.

And Athenæus quotes from the Cretica of Sosicrates, τὴν μὲν κοινὴν δουλείαν οἱ Κρῆτες καλοῦσι μνοίαν· τὴν δὲ ἰδίαν ἀφαμιώτας· τοὺς δὲ περιοίκους, ὑπηκόους 317. He also says, that, according to Ephorus, the general name for slave in Crete was κλαρώτης, and that it was derived from the custom of apportioning the slaves by lot. This remarkably fixes the character of Cretan slavery as owing its rise to some institutions public in the highest sense, for merely private slavery could not, it would appear, have had an origin such as to account for the name. It thus indirectly supports the idea implied in μνοία and μνῆτοι, that it was derived from Minos. Athenæus 318 again, quoting the Creticæ glossæ of Hermon, gives us the words μνώτας, τοὺς εὐγενεῖς (otherwise read ἐγγενεῖς) οἰκέτας, and thus pointing to the reduction to servitude of some of the previously free population of the country.

There can be little doubt that it was the Pelasgic part of the population which thus succumbed before the more active elements of Cretan society, and which continued in the manual occupation of husbandry, while war, policy, and maritime pursuits became the lot of their more fortunate competitors. For is it difficult to divine which were those more active elements, since Homer points out for us among the inhabitants of Crete at least two tribes, the Achæans and the Dorians, of Hellic origin. Bishop Thirlwall points also to a Phœnician element in Crete, and to Homer as indicating the Phœnician origin of Minos. This is suggested not only by his birth, and by his maritime preeminence, but by Homer’s placing Dædalus in Crete 319. For that name directly establishes a connection with the arts that made Sidon and Phœnicia so famous. The later tradition, indeed, places Dædalus personally in relations with Minos, as having been pursued by him after he had fled to Sicily 320.

Elsewhere I have shown reason for supposing that a second of the five Cretan nations, namely, the Κύδωνες, was Pelasgian: and there is a curious tradition, which supports this hypothesis. According to Ephorus 321, there were solemn festivals of the slave population, during which freemen were not permitted to enter within the walls, while the slaves were supreme, and had the right of flogging the free; and these festivals were held in Cydonia, the city of these Κύδωνες.

Our belief in a Cretan empire of Minos, founded on the evidence of the Poems, and sustained by the statement of Thucydides, need not be impaired by the fact that we find little post-Homeric evidence directly available for its support. In early times the recollection of dynasties very much depended on the interest which their successors had in keeping it alive. Now the Minoan empire was already reduced to fragments at the time of the Troica. The supremacy over Greece was then in the hands of a family that held the throne of the Perseids and the Danaids, a throne older than that of Minos himself, though in his time probably less distinguished: a throne whose lustre would have been diminished by a lively tradition of his power and greatness. And it was from the Pelopids that the Dorian sovereigns of Sparta claimed to inherit. Therefore the great Greek sovereignty, from the Troica onwards, had no interest in cherishing the recollection of this ancient part of history; on the contrary, their interest lay in depressing it; and under these circumstances we need not wonder that, until the inquiring age of Greek literature and philosophy, when Athens gained the predominance, the traces of it should have remained but faint. But the traces of Cretans have been found extensively dispersed both over the islands, and on the coasts of the Ægean 322.

The Lycians.

To complete the statement of this part of the case, it is necessary to turn to another country, holding, with its inhabitants, a very peculiar position in the Iliad. The attentive reader of the poem must often inquire, with curiosity and wonder, why it is that Homer everywhere follows the Lycian name with favour so marked, that it may almost be called favouritism. At every turn, which brings that people into view, we are met by the clearest indications of it: and few of Homer’s indications, none of his marked indications, are without a cause and an aim.

Sarpedon, the Lycian commander in chief, performs the greatest military exploit on the Trojan side that is to be found throughout the poems 323. That he does not obscure the eminence of Hector is only owing to the fact, that his share in the action of the poem is smaller, not to its being less distinguished. Everywhere he plays his part with a faultless valour, a valour set off by his modesty, and by his keen sense of public duty according to the strictest meaning of the term 324; Jupiter, his father, sheds tears of blood for his coming death; and he is in truth the most perfect as well as the bravest man on the Trojan side. Glaucus, his second in command, is inferior to no Trojan warrior save Hector, though in the exchange of the arms with Diomed Homer has, as usual, reserved the superiority to the Grecian intellect.

The distinctions awarded to the Lycian people are in full proportion to those of their king Sarpedon. They formed one only among the eleven divisions of the auxiliary force, but the Lycian 325 name, and theirs only 326, evidently on account of their eminence, is often used to signify the entire body. In the great assault on the Greek trench and rampart, Sarpedon their leader commands all the allies, and chooses as his lieutenants Glaucus, and Asteropæus a Pæonian, but not the Pæonian general 327. They are never mentioned with any epithet except of honour: and to them is applied the term ἀντίθεοι 328, which is given to no other tribe or nation in the Iliad, and in the Odyssey only to the Phæacians 329; to these last it appertains doubtless on account of their relationship to the immortals. The Lycian attack in the Twelfth Book is the one really formidable to the Greeks 330, and in the rout of the Sixteenth Book we are told, that ‘not even the stalwart (ἴφθιμοι) Lycians’ held their ground after the death of Sarpedon 331. They alone are appealed to in the name of that peculiar and sacred sentiment of military honour called αἰδὼς, which, with this single exception, seems to be the exclusive property of the Greeks 332.

It is difficult to account for this glowing representation, so consistently carried through the poem, except upon the supposition, that Homer regarded the Lycians as having some peculiar affinity or other relation with the Greeks; and that he on this account raised them out of what would otherwise more naturally have been a secondary position.

There are many signs of a specific kind, that this was actually his view of them.

1. To make Sarpedon the son of Jupiter was at once to establish some relationship with the Greek races.

2. The legend of Bellerophon, delivered on the field of battle, was not required, nor is it introduced, merely to fill up the time during which Hector goes from the camp to the city. It required no filling up: but Homer turns the interval to account by using it to give us this interesting chapter of archaic history, doubtless in order to illustrate, as all his other legends do, the beginnings and early relations of the Hellenic races. Accordingly we find that Antea, wife of Prœtus the Argive king, was a Lycian: that a familiar intercourse subsisted between the two courts, such as probably and strongly implies that the nations had other ties: and lastly that an Æolid line of sovereigns, descended through Sisyphus, were the actual governors of Lycia at the period of the Troica.

3. The very same ideas of kingship and its offices, which prevailed in Greece, are expressed by Sarpedon in his speech to Glaucus 333, and there is an indication of free institutions which enlarges the resemblance. The force of this circumstance will be more fully appreciated, when we shall have examined the Asiatic tinge which is perceptible in the institutions of Troy itself.

4. Besides the Æolid sovereignty, the etymology of the names of Lycian warriors connects itself not only with the Greek race, but with the Hellic element in that race 334.

5. On the other hand Apollo, whom we shall hereafter find to be the great Pelasgian, though also universal, god, is even, according to Homer, in close and peculiar connection with Lycia, although he is not localized there by Homer as he is in the later tradition. First as being λυκηγενής. Secondly as the great bowman: while Lycia was so eminent in this art, that Æneas, addressing Pandarus with a compliment on his skill, says no man before Troy can match him, and perhaps even in Lycia there may not be a better archer 335. Thirdly, this Pandarus the archer, and son of Lycaon, received the gift of his bow from Apollo himself 336: and says, that Apollo prompted or instructed him, as he came from Lycia 337. It may, however, be reasonably questioned, whether we are here to understand the Lycia of the South, or the district of kindred name in Troas. In any case, Apollo in Lycia would be no more than the counterpart of Minerva in Pelasgian Athens.

6. The prevalence of that Lycian name in other quarters, such as Arcadia, of a marked Pelasgian character, further supports the supposition that Lycia had probably a Pelasgian race for the bulk of its population, holding the same subordinate relation to another race as we find in corresponding cases. In Arcadia 338 Pausanias reports a Lycaon son of Pelasgus; a Lycosura, the city he founded; Lyceon, the hill where it stood; and Lycea, the games he established.

All this evidence combines to show some correspondence between Lycia and Greece, as to the constituent elements of the population. The agreement could not have been perfect: for the records of the Lycian language, I believe, show a prevalence of other elements than the Greek. But we have thus a reason to suppose, that the community of architecture and other arts which has been found to subsist between the two countries, was not merely dependent on later colonisation, but was owing to an affinity of races and similarity of manners which dates from the heroic age.

Lastly, the fragments of Homeric evidence respecting the Lycians are combined by a later tradition, which links them to Crete, the main subject of our recent inquiry. According to this tradition, there was a Sarpedon earlier than the Sarpedon of the Troica, who, besides being son of Jupiter, was brother to Minos. He is said to have been expelled, with his adherents, by that sovereign from Crete; to have repaired to Lycia, and to have colonised that country, or a part of it. In the time of Herodotus, as we have seen, it retained laws of Cretan, that is to say of Greek, origin. And at two later periods of its history, far remote from Homer and from one another, its inhabitants signalised themselves by the most desperate valour in defence of Xanthus, its capital 339.

For the origin of the group of names, having Λύκος or some similar word for their root, it seems most natural to infer its identity with the Latin lucus, essentially the same with lupus, and to presume that it had a Pelasgic source, but that the word corresponding with it, probably Λύκος, meaning a wood or grove, had become obsolete in the later Hellenic tongue. There is every reason for a supposition of this kind, as these words, etymologically connected, evidently hang round some common centre, which centre has reference to primitive and to Pelasgic life, as well as to the somewhat specially Pelasgic deity Apollo. Nor is it strange that the root of a name associated with the Pelasgi should have been lost to the Greek tongue, while the name itself remains: we have another example in Larissa.

But if there was such a word, with such a meaning, the link, which may perhaps connect it with Pelasgic life, is evident. For the first agricultural settlers must often be, as such, in a greater or less degree, dwellers in woods. It may be said that in the United States, at the present day, the proper name for an agricultural settler is ‘backwoodsman.’ In British colonies of Australia, they, who pass beyond the limits of existing settlement, in order to extend it, are said to go into the bush. Thus the idea at the root of the Lycian name is in all probability twin, or rather elder brother, to that which properly would indicate the agricultural settler.

It is however plain, that we cannot look to any thing simply Pelasgian in the Lycian population, as supplying the motive which has induced Homer to give the Lycians a marked preference over other populations, themselves of a Pelasgian character. This preference must be due to the other element, which associates them especially with the Hellenic race. And we may not irrationally suppose it to be founded on any one of such causes as these: the special connection in the royal line between the two countries: a larger infusion of the more lordly blood into a subordinate Lelegian or Pelasgian body in Lycia, just as in Greece, than in Troas and Asia Minor generally: or lastly, a more palpable and near connection between the dominant caste in Lycia and those Persian highlanders, from among whom may have proceeded 340 the forefathers of the Hellenic tribes. Everywhere we see this race branching forth, and, by an intrinsic superiority, acquiring a predominance over the races in prior occupation. Whether the stock came to Lycia by land, or from the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, it may be hard even to conjecture: but there is one particular note of relationship to Persia, which Lycia retains more clearly than Greece, and that is the high estimation in which, to judge from the connection with Apollo and from Il. v. 172, the use of the bow was held in that country. The case was the same in Persia. According to Herodotus, one of the three essential articles of education in Persia was the use of the bow 341; and he is not contradicted by Ctesias, who calls him in most things a liar and a fabulist 342. We must not, indeed, rely too strongly upon a circumstance like this. Cyaxares the Median had the art taught to his sons by Nomad Scythians 343. We may however observe that alike on the Trojan and the Grecian side we never hear of the bow except in the hands of highborn persons, such as Paris, Pandarus, Teucer: and, in the games, Meriones 344.

In passing, it may deserve remark, that the Lycians alone, of all tribes or nations on either side, appear not under two leaders merely, but two kings, in the strict sense. I do not however believe that this indicates a political peculiarity. The origin of it may probably be found in the legend of Bellerophon, to whom, after his high exploits and great services, the reigning sovereign gave half his kingdom 345. Now that king is nowhere stated to have had a son: and if we suppose a failure of issue in his own direct line, and the succession of one of the two descendants of his daughter to each moiety of the realm, it at once accounts for the exceptional position of Sarpedon and Glaucus.

The suppositions then towards which we are led are, that Minos was of Phœnician origin, that he came to Crete and acquired the sovereignty, that he ruled over a mixed population of Cretans, Pelasgians, and Hellic tribes, that he organised the country and established an extended supremacy, especially maritime and insular, beyond its limits; which however we must not consider as involving the consistent maintenance of sovereignty according to modern ideas, and which is in no degree inconsistent with the rule of Danaids or Perseids in Peloponnesus. Lastly, that in giving form to his social institutions, he depressed the Pelasgian element of Cretan society, and laid, in political depression, the foundations of their subsequent servitude.

Cyprus.

If this be so, it is worth while further to observe, that there are traces of a somewhat analogous history in Cyprus, another acknowledged stepping-stone, according to Homer 346, between Greece and the East.

In the Seventeenth Book of the Odyssey 347, Ulysses, in one of his fictitious narrations, states to the Suitors, that the Egyptians, who had taken him prisoner and reduced him to slavery, then made a present of him to their ξεῖνος Dmetor, a descendant of Iasus, who ruled ‘with might,’ that is, with considerable power over Cyprus (ὃς Κύπρου ἶφι ἄνασσεν); the same expression as he uses in the Eleventh Book with respect to Amphion, the Iasid, in Orchomenus. From all we know of the Iasian name 348, it may be inferred that this was a Pelasgian dynasty, and if so, then without doubt that it ruled over a Pelasgian people.

Ulysses does not mention the time of this transaction; and it must be remembered, that he spoke in the character of an aged person, so that the scene might be laid (so to speak) thirty or forty years back, and therefore long before the expedition to Troy.

But in the Eleventh Book of the Iliad 349, we find Agamemnon putting on a breastplate, which was evidently a marvel of workmanship, with its plates on plates of different metals, and its six dragons flashing forth the colours of the rainbow. Now we must observe, first, that this was evidently meant to be understood as a Sidonian or Phœnician work: secondly, that it was presented to Agamemnon by Cinyres of Cyprus, to conciliate his favour (—χαριζόμενος βασιλῆï, perhaps we might render it, to win the favour of his king—) upon the occasion of his hearing that the king was collecting an armament against Troy. That is to say, it was to compound with him for not appearing in person to join the Greek forces. Here then we must infer that there was some vague allegiance, which was due, or which at least might be claimed, from Cyprus to Agamemnon, under the πολλῇσιν νήσοισι 350.

Now we know nothing of the Pelopids before the Troica as conquerors: and especially, it would be difficult to apply the supposition that they were such in relation to a place so distant. Therefore the political connection, whatever it may have been, could probably rest upon an ethnical affinity alone; and, as we know nothing of any Hellic element in this quarter, that affinity seems to presume the Pelasgian character of the population. The inference, which may thus be drawn, coincides with that already suggested by the name of Iasus.

We may however justly be curious to learn what conditions they were which gave to Cinyres, and so far as we know to Cinyres alone, among princes, this very peculiar attitude at a critical juncture. It is obvious, that in proportion as his situation was remote from the Greek rendezvous, and from the scene of action, the service became more burdensome: but on the other hand, in proportion as he was distant from the centre of Achæan power, he was little likely to be coerced. How comes it then that Agamemnon had over Cinyres an influence which he does not seem to have possessed over the tribes of Macedonia and Thrace, though these lay nearer both to him, and to the way between him and the Troad, which he had to traverse by sea?

The hypothesis, that the population of Cyprus was purely or generally Pelasgian, appears to square remarkably with the facts. For then, upon the one hand, they would naturally be disinclined to interfere on behalf of the Greeks in a war where all purely Pelasgian sympathies would (as we must for the present take for granted) incline them towards Troy.

But further, we find among other notes of the Pelasgians this, that they were characterised by a want of nautical genius, while the more enterprising character of the Hellenes at once made them, and has kept them down to this very day, an eminently maritime people; and Homer himself, with his whole soul, evidently gloried and delighted in the sea. If then the population of Cyprus was Pelasgian, we can readily understand how, notwithstanding its sympathies and its remoteness, it might be worth the while of its ruler to propitiate Agamemnon by a valuable gift in order to avert a visit which his ships might otherwise be expected to pay; and how the Pelopid power over Cyprus, as an island, might be greater than over nearer tribes, which were continental.

It may aid us to comprehend the relation between Cyprus and Agamemnon, if we call to recollection the insular empire which Athens afterwards acquired.

There is another sign, which strongly tends to connect Cyprus with the Pelasgian races, especially those which belong to Asia. It is the worship of Venus, who had in that island her especial sanctuary, and who, upon her detection in the Odyssey 351, takes refuge there. In the war, she is keenly interested on the Trojan side: and the Trojan history is too plainly marked with the influence of the idea, that exalted her to Olympian rank. That Venus was known mythologically among the Hellenic tribes, we see from the lay of Demodocus. That she was worshipped among them, seems to be rendered extremely improbable by the fact, that Diomed wounds her in his ἀριστεῖα 352. We must consider her as a peculiarly, and perhaps in Homer’s time almost exclusively Pelasgian deity; and her local abode at Paphos may be taken as a marked sign, accordingly, of the Pelasgianism of Cyprus.

We have already seen Agapenor, a stranger, placed by Agamemnon in command of the Pelasgian forces of Arcadia; and Minos, a stranger, acquire dominion over the partially, and perhaps mainly, Pelasgian population of Crete. It seems probable, that Cyprus in this too affords us a parallel. We have the following considerations to guide us in the question. First, the Pelasgians, not being a maritime, were consequently not a mercantile people. Secondly, from the description of the gift sent by Cinyres, we must understand it, on account of the preciousness of its materials and its ornaments, to have been a first rate example of the skill of the workers in metal of the period. Such things were not produced by Pelasgians; and we must, to be consistent with all the other Homeric indications, suppose this breastplate to have been of Sidonian or Phœnician workmanship. This supposition connects Cinyres himself with Phœnicia, while his people were Pelasgian. Again, on examining his name we find in it no Pelasgian characteristics; but it appears to be Asiatic, and to signify a musical instrument with strings, which was used in Asia 353. All this makes it likely, upon Homeric presumptions, that he was a Phœnician, or a person of Phœnician connections, and that into his hands the old Pelasgic sovereignty of Minos had passed over from the Iasid family, which had reigned there shortly before the Troica.

The Homeric tradition with respect to Cinyres is supported to some extent from without 354. Apollodorus so far agrees with it as to report, that Cinyres migrated from the neighbouring Asiatic continent into Cyprus with a body of followers, founded Paphos, and married the daughter of the king of the island. Apollodorus, Pindar, and Ovid, all treat Cinyres in a way which especially connects him with the worship of Venus, as though he had introduced it into the island; and it is observable, that the points at which we find this deity in contact with the race are all in Asia, or on the way from it, that is to say, Troas, Cyprus, and lastly, Cythera: as if it were not original to the Greeks, but engrafted, and gradually taking its hold. Sandacus was, according to Apollodorus, the father of Cinyres, and had come from Syria into Cilicia.

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. They thus invited aggression, which their political genius and organization were not strong enough to repel; and the power of their ancient but feeble sovereignties passed over into the hands of families or tribes more capable of permanently retaining it, and of wielding it with vigour and effect.

Negative argument from Homer.

I must not, however, pass from the subject of Homeric testimony respecting the Pelasgi, without adverting to one important negative part of it.

It must be observed, that, as anterior to the three appellatives which he ordinarily applies to the Greeks of the Trojan war collectively, Homer uses no name whatever other than the Pelasgic, which is not of limited and local application. Neither Ἀχαιοὶ, Ἀργεῖοι, nor Δαναοὶ, bear any one sign of being the proper designation of the original settlers and inhabitants of all Greece: and if the name for them be not Πελασγοὶ, there certainly is no other name whatever which can compete for the honour, none which has the same marks at once of great antiquity, and of covering a wide range of the country. And if, as I trust, it shall hereafter be shown, that all these came from abroad as strangers into a country already occupied, there then will be a presumption of no mean force arising even out of this negative, to the effect that the Pelasgians were the original base of the Greek nation, while we are also entitled to affirm, upon the evidence of Homer, that their race extended beyond the limits of Greece.

Such is the supposition upon which we already begin to find that the testimony of the poems as a whole appears to converge. It is, I grant, indirect, and fragmentary, and much of it conjectural; we may greatly enlarge its quantity from sources not yet opened: but I wish to direct particular attention to its unity and harmony, to the multitude of indications which, though separate and individually slight, all coincide with the theory that the Pelasgi supplied the substratum of the Greek population subsisting under dominant Hellic influences; and to the fact, I would almost venture to add, that they can coincide with nothing else.

The Pelasgians; post-Homeric evidence.

We must proceed, however, to consider that portion of the evidence in the case, which is external to the Homeric Poems.

Besides what has been up to this point incidentally touched, there is a great mass of extra-Homeric testimony, which tends, when read in the light of Homer, to corroborate the views which have here been taken of the Pelasgi, as one of the main coefficients of the Greek nation.

In the first chapter of the able work of Bishop Marsh, entitled, Horæ Pelasgicæ 355, will be found an ample collection of passages from Greek writers, which, though many of them are in themselves slight, and any one if taken singly could be of little weight for the purpose of proof, yet collectively indicate that the possession of the entire country at the remotest period by the Pelasgi was little less than an universal and invariable tradition. I will here collect some portion of the evidence which may be cited to this effect.

Coming next to Homer in time and in authority, Hesiod supports him, as we have seen above 356, in associating Dodona both with the Pelasgic and with the Hellic races; placing it, just as Homer does, in the midst of the latter, and more distinctly than Homer indicating its foundation by the former. It may be observed that, in a Fragment, he questionably personifies Pelasgus 357.

Next we find the very ancient poet Asius, according to the quotation of Pausanias 358, assigning the very highest antiquity to the Pelasgian race, by making Pelasgus the father of men;

ἀντίθεον δὲ Πελασγὸν ἐν ὑψικόμοισιν ὄρεσσι
γαῖα μέλαιν’ ἀνέδωκεν, ἵνα θνητῶν γένος εἴη.

Among the Greek writers, not being historians themselves, of the historic period, there is none whose testimony bears, to my perception, so much of the true archaic stamp, as Æschylus. It seems as if we could trace in him a greater piety towards Homer, and we certainly find a more careful regard both to his characters and his facts, than were afterwards commonly paid to them. Nay he excels in this respect the Cyclic poets. They were much nearer in date to the great master, but he, as it were, outran them, by a deeper and nobler sympathy. In him, too, the drama had not yet acquired the character, which effaces or impairs its claims to historical authority: which earned for it the ἐκτραγῳδεῖν of Aristotle 359 and Polybius 360, and on which was founded the declaration of Socrates in the Minos, Ἀττικὸν λέγεις μῦθον καὶ τραγικόν 361. Even where he speaks allegorically, he seems to represent the first form of allegory, in which it is traceably moulded upon history, and serves for its key. It is not therefore unreasonable to attach importance to his rendering of the public tradition respecting the Pelasgi, which we find in a remarkable passage of the Supplices;

τοῦ γηγενοῦς γάρ εἰμ’ ἐγὼ Παλαίχθονος
ἶνις Πελασγὸς, τῆσδε γῆς ἀρχηγέτης.
ἐμοῦ δ’ ἄνακτος εὐλόγως ἐπώνυμον
γένος Πελασγῶν τήνδε καρποῦται χθόνα 362.

Pelasgus, himself the speaker, then describes his dominions as reaching from Peloponnesus (χώρη Ἀπίη) in the south to the river Strymon in the north (πρὸς δύνοντος ἡλίου), and declares how Apis, coming from Acarnania, had fitted the country for the abode of man by clearing it of wild beasts. Acarnania marks the line of country, which formed the ordinary route from Thessaly to Peloponnesus. Taken literally, Pelasgus is the son of the Earthborn, and the name-giver of the Pelasgian race. What the passage signifies evidently is, that by ancient tradition the Pelasgians were the first occupants of the country, and that they reached from the north to the south of Greece. It is in the reign of this mythical Pelasgus, that Danaus reaches the Peloponnesus.

Of such an eponymus Thessaly, Argos, and Arcadia had each their separate tradition in its appropriate dress. Pausanias reports the Arcadian one very fully: and according to its tenour Pelasgus taught the use of dwellings and clothes, and to eat chestnuts instead of roots, grass, and leaves 363. The tomb of Pelasgus was pretended to be shown at Argos.

Herodotus states that the Hellas of his day was formerly called Πελασγία 364: gives to the Peloponnesian women of the era of Danaus the name of Πελασγιωτίδες γυναῖκες 365: he denominates the Arcadians Πελασγοὶ Ἀρκάδες 366, the people of what was afterwards Achaia Πελασγοὶ Αἰγιαλέες 367, the Athenians Πελασγοὶ Κραναοὶ 368, whom also he describes as autochthonic 369: and he shows, that recollections of the Pelasgian worship were preserved in his day at Dodona 370. He furthermore mentions the Πελασγικὸν τεῖχος 371 at Athens; and he places the Pelasgian race in Samothrace, and Lemnos, and mentions their settlements upon the Hellespont, named Placia and Scylace.

Thucydides describes the spot or building called Πελασγικὸν under the Acropolis at Athens, the very situation, in which the original town would in all likelihood be placed for safety. This historian also sustains, with the weight of his judgment, the opinion that in pre-Hellenic times the prevailing race and name in Greece were Pelasgic; κατὰ ἔθνη δὲ ἄλλα τε καὶ τὸ Πελασγικὸν ἐπὶ πλεῖστον 372.

It is true, that in another passage 373, among the races of the βάρβαροι, he enumerates the Pelasgi: but the epithet itself, which was wholly inapplicable to the heroic age, shows that he spoke with reference to the demarcation established in his own time, which made every thing barbarous that was not Greek, either geographically or by known derivation. Barbarian with him and his contemporaries meant simply foreign, with the addition of a strong dash of depreciation. The full-grown Hellenic character no longer owned kindred with the particular races, which nevertheless might have contributed, each in its own time and place, to the formation of that remarkable product. The relationship is, however, established by Thucydides himself; for he says these Pelasgi were of the same Tyrseni, who occupied Athens at an earlier period.

Theocritus, who flourished early in the third century B. C., has a passage where he distinguishes chronologically between different persons and races. He begins with the heroes of the Troica, and then goes back to the ἔτι πρότεροι, in which capacity he names the Lapithæ, the Deucalidæ, the Pelopids, and lastly the Ἄργεος ἄκρα Πελασγοί 374. The word ἄκρα might mean either (1) the flower of Greece, or (2) the very oldest and earliest inhabitants of Greece 375. Now as the Pelasgians were by no means the flower of Greece, we can only choose the latter meaning for this particular passage. The word Ἄργος is perhaps taken here in its largest sense 376.

Apollonius Rhodius, nearly a century later, adheres to part at least of the same tradition, and calls Thessaly the πολυλήïος αἶα Πελασγῶν 377. The Scholiast on this passage adds an older testimony, stating that Sophocles, in the Inachus, declared that the Πελασγοὶ and Ἀργεῖοι were the same.

According to Strabo, the Pelasgi were the most ancient race which had held power in Greece: τῶν περὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα δυναστευσάντων ἀρχαιότατοι 378. In the same place he calls the oracle of Dodona Πελασγῶν ἵδρυμα, a Pelasgian foundation. He expressly supports the construction which has been given above to the Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος of Homer 379, in the words τὸ Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος ἡ Θετταλία λέγεται, and he defines the country by the Peneus, Pindus, and Thermopylæ. He traces the Pelasgi in a multitude of particular places, and, on the authority of Ephorus, mentions Πελασγία as a name of Peloponnesus. He also gives us that fragment of Euripides, which states, in harmony with the testimony of Æschylus, that Danaus came to Greece, founded the city of Inachus, and changed the name of the inhabitants from Pelasgiotes to Danaans.

Πελασγιώτας δ’ ὠνομασμένους τὸ πρὶν
Δαναοὺς καλεῖσθαι νόμον ἔθηκ’ ἀν’ Ἑλλάδα.

And Strabo considers that both the Pelasgiote and the Danaan name, together with that of the Hellenes, were covered by the Argive or Argeian name on account of the fame, to which the city of Argos rose 380.

The writings of Dionysius of Halicarnassus probably represent all, that a sound judgment could gather from the records and traditions extant in his time 381. He pronounces confidently, that the Pelasgian race was Hellenic; which I take to mean, that it was one of the component parts of the body afterwards called Hellenic, not that the early Pelasgi were included among the early Hellenes. He considers that the race came from Peloponnesus, where many believed it to be autochthonic, into Thessaly, under Achæus, Phthius, and Pelasgus. It was unfortunate, as in other respects, so in being driven to frequent migrations. This idea of the frequent displacement of the Pelasgians was probably the product in the main of the two facts, first, that traces of them were found at many widely separated points, and secondly, that, according to tradition, they had sunk into a position of inferiority.

K. O. Müller, proceeding chiefly on the post-Homeric tradition, has strongly summed up the evidence as to the Pelasgi, to the following effect.

They were the original inhabitants of the plains and flat bottoms of the valleys, any one of which the ancients called by the name Ἄργος, as we see by the plains of the Peneus, and of the Inachus. If, as Strabo holds, this use of the word was in his time modern, and Macedonian or Thessalian, it may still have been a revival of a primitive usage, even as the very old word Γραικὸς had come back into use with the Alexandrian poets, through the old common tongue of Macedonia.

Their oldest towns were the Larissæ 382, and the number of these points out the Pelasgians as a city-founding people, expert in raising considerable and durable structures. These Larissæ were upon alluvial soils by rivers, and the Pelasgians were early diggers of canals 383. Their pursuits were agricultural; hence they occupy the richest soils: hence Pelasgus is the host of 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.

Treating as an error the tradition of their vagrant character, he conceives them to be generally and above all autochthonic. He quotes from Asius in Pausanias the lines which have already been quoted.

There is no record, he says, of their coming into Greece by colonization. They are a people distinct, he thinks, from Lelegians and Carians, as well as from the northern immigrants, Achæans, and Thessalians: and they are the basis and groundwork of the Greek nation 384.

In Niebuhr 385 will be found a comprehensive outline of the wide range of Pelasgian occupancy in Italy: and Cramer supplies a similar sketch for Asia Minor and for Greece 386.

I forbear to quote Latin authorities as to the Pelasgi of Greece. The strong Pelasgian character of Magna Græcia will of itself naturally account for the free use of the name by Romans to designate the Greek nation, and cannot therefore greatly serve to show even the later tradition concerning the ancient position of the Pelasgians in Greece, and their relations to its other inhabitants.

Marsh appears to assert too much, when he says that we may set down as peculiarly Pelasgian those places which retained the Pelasgian name in the historic ages. It does not follow from this retention, that Placia and Scylace were more genuinely Pelasgian than Thessaly, any more than we are entitled to say from Homer, that Thessaly was originally more Pelasgian than Attica or Peloponnesus, though it retained the name longer. The reason may have been, that no such powerful pressure from a superior race was brought to bear in the one class of cases, as in the other 387.

In holding that the Pelasgians were the base, so to speak, of the Greek nation, I mean to indicate it as a probable opinion, that they continued to form the mass of the inhabitants throughout all the changes of name which succeeded the period of their rule. But it would appear, that a succession of other more vigorous influences from the Hellic stock must have contributed far more powerfully in all respects, excepting as to numbers, to compose and shape the nationality of the people. The chief part of the Pelasgians of Attica may perhaps have lain among the 400,000 slaves, who formed the unheeded herd of its population; much as in Italy the serfs of the Greek colonists bore the Pelasgian name 388. So large a body could scarcely have been formed in that limited territory, except out of the original inhabitants of the country. In early stages of society the bulk of society takes its impress from one, or from a few, of superior force: and the ruling families and tribes of a smaller, but more energetic and warlike race, finding for themselves a natural place at the head of societies already constituted, assume the undisputed direction of their fortunes, and become, by a spontaneous law, their sole representatives in the face of the world, and in the annals of its history.

Language of the Pelasgians.

We may, however, find no inconsiderable proof of the presence of a strong Pelasgian element in the Greek nation, in that portion of the evidence upon the case which is supplied by language. Those numerous and important words in the Latin tongue, which correspond with the words belonging to the same ideas in Greek, could only have come from the Pelasgian ancestry common to both countries; and, if coming from them, must demonstrate in the one case, as in the other, the strong Pelasgian tincture of the nation.

And as the language of a country cannot be extensively impregnated in this manner, except either by numbers, or by political and social ascendancy (as was the case of the French tongue with the English), or by literary influence (as is now the case with us in respect to the Greek and Latin tongues), we must ask to which of these causes it was owing, that the Pelasgians so deeply marked the Greek language with the traces of their own tongue. It was not literary influence, for we may be sure that there existed none. It was not political ascendancy, for they were either enslaved, or at the least subordinate. It could only be the influence of their numbers, through which their manner of speech could in any measure hold its ground; and thus we arrive again at the conclusion, that they must have supplied the substratum of the nation.

It is true that Herodotus, as well as Thucydides, spoke of the Pelasgians as using a foreign tongue. So a German writer would naturally describe the English, and yet the English language, by one of its main ingredients, bears conclusive testimony to the Saxon element of the English nation, and also illustrates the relative positions, which the Saxon and Norman races are known in history to have occupied. The tongue of the Pelasgians had been subject within Greece to influence and admixture from the language of the Hellic tribes: beyond Greece it had received impressions from different sources; and naturally, after the consequences of this severance had worked for centuries, the speech of the Pelasgians would be barbarous in the eyes of the Greeks. Again, Marsh 389 observes that, in the very chapter where he distinguishes Pelasgic from Hellenic, Herodotus (i. 56) declares the Ionians to belong to one of these stocks, the Dorians to the other: both of which populations were in his time undoubtedly Greek. And the historian gives another strong proof that the Pelasgians were Greek, where he assigns to this parentage (ii. 52) the Greek name of the gods: θεοὺς δὲ προσωνόμασάν σφεας ἀπὸ τοῦ τοιούτου, ὅτι κόσμῳ θέντες τὰ πάντα πρήγματα κ.τ.λ.

Even if we suppose, as may have been the case, that the Pelasgi mentioned by Herodotus, and by Thucydides, spoke a tongue as far from the Greek actually known to either of them, as is German from the English language at the present day, yet by its affinities that tongue might still remain a conclusive proof, that the ancestors of those who spoke it must have formed an essential ingredient in the composition of the nation. The evidence, which we know to be good in the one case, might be equally valid in the other.

There is abundance of testimony among authors, both Greek and Roman, to establish the relation of the Pelasgi to the old forms of the language of both countries. It is enough for the present to refer to the Second Chapter of Bishop Marsh’s Horæ Pelasgicæ for a very able and satisfactory discussion of the question. I shall presently have to consider the particular complexion of the words which the Greek nation appear to have derived from Pelasgic sources, and the inferences which that complexion suggests. But this will best be done, when we have examined into the Homeric import of the Hellenic and Pelasgian proper names.

Pelasgian route into Greece.

We have next to examine the question,

By what route is it most probable that this Pelasgian nation came into Greece?

On this subject there can hardly be any other than one of two suppositions: the first, that by Thrace, or by the islands of the north, they reached Thessaly: the other, that they crossed from Asia, to the south of the Ægean, by the islands which divide the spaces of that sea.

It is observed by Cramer 390, that the prevailing opinion among those ancient writers, who have discussed the subject, places the Pelasgians first in the Peloponnesus: this being maintained by Pherecydes, Ephorus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Pausanias, without any dissentients to oppose them. This tradition evidently favours the opinion of a passage by the south.

Dionysius, who may be regarded as summing up the general results of Greek tradition, says 391 it placed the Pelasgians first in the Peloponnesus as autochthons; and represented them as having migrated to Thessaly in the sixth generation. In six generations more, they were, he conceives, expelled by the Ætolians and Locrians, then called Curetes and Leleges, and were dispersed into various quarters: indeed, here the tradition seems to become wholly vague or mythical, and to have gathered into one mass most of the places in which there appeared signs of Pelasgic occupancy: it includes the report of a great migration to Italy.

Marsh 392 considers Thrace as the original seat in Europe of the Pelasgi; but the data on which he proceeds are too narrow; they have reference only to the islands of Lemnus, Imbrus, and Samothrace. There is no evidence of Pelasgians on the Continent to the north of the Ægean except what places them at a distance from Troy (τῆλε Hom. Il. xvii. 301), and if so, at a point which they may have reached from those islands, more probably, than by the continental route. It is on the whole more likely, however, that Pelasgians may have found their way into Greece both by the north (and if so, probably through the islands), and also by the south.

Homer affords no materials for conclusively determining the question. He gives us the Pelasgic name established in Thessaly, which favours our supposing the one passage, and likewise in Crete, which favours the other. He gives us the Pelasgic Jove of Dodona (a very weighty piece of testimony), and the τέμενος of Ceres in Thessaly, telling rather for the first; and he likewise gives us a perceptible connection between Ceres and Crete, and between Jupiter and king Minos, verging to the latter. But it is to be observed that, with the exception of Attica, the chief Homeric tokens of Pelasgianism lie in Northern and in Southern, but not in Middle, Greece: which favours the opinion, that there may have been a double line of entry.

The extra-Homeric tradition is on the whole most favourable to the supposition of a southern route. Hesiod makes Dodona in Thessaly Pelasgian, but distinctly associates Ceres with Crete: and the Theogony (479, 80) sends Jupiter as an infant to be reared in Crete. The Hymn to Ceres, as we have seen, brings her from thence to Eleusis; and the popular mythology in general treats that island as the cradle of Jupiter, therefore manifestly as the place from which the Greeks derived his worship. More than this; the tradition makes Peloponnesus the seat and centre of Pelasgic power, as we see from Æschylus, who makes Pelasgus reside in Peloponnesus, but rule as far as Macedonia. So likewise the names both of Ἀπίη γαῖα and of Ἰασὸν Ἄργος connect themselves originally with this part of Greece: especially when we consider that Apis in Egypt is the sacred bull, and that agriculture, the characteristic pursuit of the Pelasgians, was also the business of oxen. Again, Herodotus 393 reports that the local tradition of Dodona assigned to that oracle an Egyptian origin; and as Dodona was Pelasgic, this tradition somewhat favours the hypothesis of entry by the south.

There are several allusions in Homer to Crete, to Cyprus, or to both, as marking the route between Greece and Asia. Menelaus, after quitting Troy, and nearing Crete (Od. iii. 285-92), sailed afar

Κύπρον Φοινίκην τε καὶ Αἰγυπτίους ἐπαληθεῖς 394.

The pseudo-Ulysses sails from Crete to Egypt 395, and returns thence to Phœnicia, in one tale, and afterwards starts for Libya by Crete; in another legend, he is given over from Egypt to Cyprus; and Antinous 396, in the Seventeenth Odyssey, replying to the supposed beggar-man, says, Get out of the way,

μὴ τάχα πικρὴν Αἴγυπτον καὶ Κύπρον ἵκηαι.

We already know the connection of Crete with Greece from the Iliad: and thus it appears as on the high road from Greece to Phœnicia, and by Phœnicia to Egypt. The unexampled populousness of that island would, as a matter of course, beget migration; and, of all the tracts lying to the west of the Ægean, the Thessalian plain would, from its extent, offer perhaps the greatest encouragement to agricultural settlers. The traditions reported by Herodotus from Dodona connect that place closely with Egypt and the East, and the route now supposed by Crete establishes that connection in what is probably the simplest and most obvious line.

The continental country from Thessaly to the north and east was held as it would appear to a great extent by a martial and highland race Θρῇκες and Θρηίκιοι. It is not likely that the Pelasgians had much in common with that people, or could make their way to Greece either with or in despite of them. Perhaps the coast where we find Cicones and Pæones apart from the Thracians, may have afforded a route, and we must remember the traditional traces of them both on the coast of the Hellespont and in the islands 397.

This may be the place most convenient for observing, that there can be little hesitation in regarding the northern route as that by which the Hellic tribes came into Greece. They, a highland people, came along a mountain country. They left their name upon the Hellespont, the sea of Helle, which means not the mere strait so called in later times, but the whole northern Ægean 398; and upon the river Selleeis, which discharges itself into the sea of Marmora. We first hear of them in Homer at the extreme north of Thessaly: then we find them giving their name, Hellas, to that country, or to some part of it. The people of Hellas, when their connection with their sires of the mountain had become faint in comparison with their relation to the territory they occupied, called themselves Hellenes, from the region they inhabited; and lost sight, as it were, of the ruder parent tribe. In the meantime, they had struck out offshoots through Greece, and the name Hellas had, as will be seen 399, probably come, even in the time of Homer, to be applied in a secondary and comprehensive sense to the whole northern and central parts of it.

Peloponnesus the seat of power.

It is remarkable and undeniable, with reference both to Pelasgic and to Hellenic times, that in whatever part of the country ruling tribes or families might first make their appearance, the permanent seat of power for Greece was uniformly in the Peloponnesus. Every movement of political importance appears to direct itself thither, and there to rest in equilibrium. The old tradition of Pelasgus, the dynasties of Danaids, Perseids, and Pelopids, the great Heraclid and Doric invasion, evidently aiming at laying hold on the centre of dominion, and yet more, that Spartan primacy (ἡγεμονία), which endured for so many centuries, all tell the same tale; finally the train of evidence is crowned by the strong local sympathies of Juno. It was only in the fifth century before the Christian era that Athens acquired the lead: nor did she keep it long. Her sway, after an interval, was followed by another shortlived ascendancy, that of Thebes, in the fourth century. But Greece ended as she had begun: and the last splendours of her national sentiment and military courage were flung from its pristine seats in Peloponnesus: from Lacedæmon, and Achaia. The old Amphictyonic Union alone remained, throughout the historic times of Greece, to bear witness to the fact that it was in the north of the Isthmus, and above all in Thessaly, that the Hellic tribes first organised themselves as distinct political integers, united in substance, if not in form, in respect of their common religious worship, and their common blood.

It was probably greater security, which gave this advantage, in early times, to Southern over Northern and Midland Greece. Only one narrow neck of land led into the Peloponnesus, and that passage was so circuitous, or dangerous, or both, that it was not the highway of immigrant tribes, who seem usually to have crossed the Corinthian gulf into Elis. This tract of land had not indeed the whole, but it had much, of the advantage enjoyed by England. It was not quite, but it was almost,

A precious stone, set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house 400.

When reached, it was the highway to nothing. The fat lands of Bœotia were a road onwards for all who came from Thessaly: there was here a choice between barrenness and poverty, on the one hand, like those of Attica in early times, and insecurity of tenure in the rich soils, which were the object of desire to each tribe as it went upon its march. The Peloponnesus was richer than the one, far more secure than the other: it throve accordingly; and in the Trojan war this small territory supplied four hundred and thirty ships, probably including the greatest number of large vessels, while the other two divisions of continental Greece together gave no more than five hundred and thirty. And it seems to have had altogether a more vigorous and concentrated political organisation; for while the five hundred and thirty were in fifteen divisions, under twenty-six leaders, the Peloponnesian force was in six divisions, under nine leaders only, and of the six three at least, namely, those of Mycenæ, Lacedæmon, and Arcadia, were virtually under the direct command of Agamemnon.

Derivation of the Pelasgian name.

Various derivations have been suggested for the name of the Pelasgi. Some will have it to come from Peleg, mentioned in the tenth chapter of Genesis, whose name, said to mean division, is taken to allude to the partition of the earth’s surface among the various tribes of the human race. Marsh well observes, that this amounts to no more than possibility: that the meaning of the word will not serve to attach it to the Pelasgi in particular, as in the early ages of the world migration, with partition and repartition, was a continuous process: and that, even if true, it tells us nothing of them antecedent to their European settlement 401: nothing, that is to say, of a material kind, except what we know independently of it, viz. their being, in common with all other races, of eastern origin. Clinton gives other reasons for rejecting this etymology 402, while he sees force in the reference of the names of Iapetus and Ion to Japheth and Javan respectively. It seems plain that we could not safely build upon even a complete similarity of name, in a case where the interval of time that separates Peleg and Pelasgi, the terms we are to compare, is so vast and so obscure.

So also the name πελαργοὶ, meaning storks, has been taken to be the foundation of Πελασγοί; and the explanation has been given, that the stork is a migratory bird, and that the Pelasgi were called after it on account of their wanderings.

This explanation, which seems worse than the former, rests in part upon a statement of Herodotus misconstrued. He calls the Dorians ἔθνος πουλυπλάνητον κάρτα 403, and this has been erroneously applied to the Pelasgians, of whom, on the contrary, he says, οὐδαμῆ κω ἐξεχώρησε. This statement from a writer of the age of Herodotus, fully neutralises the statement of Dionysius, who describes them as itinerant, and never securely settled 404. He may, indeed, mean no more than Thucydides means, when he says (i. 2), that the occupants of good soils were the most liable to dispossession. But does this idea of itinerancy correspond with the migrations of the stork, which seem to have reference to the steady periodical variations of climate, and to be as far as possible from the idea implied in ‘much-roving?’

It appears to have been the understood characteristic of that bird, to draw to and dwell about the settled habitations of men. It seems highly improbable, and without precedent, that a widely spread nation should take its name from a bird: but may not the bird have taken its name from the nation? If it were a nation emphatically of settlers, as opposed to pirates, robbers, nomads, and rovers of all kinds, dwelling with comfort in fixed abodes, as opposed to the ἀνιπτόποδες χαμαίευναι 405, might not birds, which seemed to share these settlements, be reasonably named after the people?

It by no means appears as if Aristophanes, in the passage where he uses the term, intended a mere pun. It is in the comedy of the Birds 406, and is an allusion to that law of the Athenians, evidently here signified under the name of storks, which required children to provide for their parents 407. The passage is clearly a testimony to the Pelasgic origin of the Athenians: and it may be based upon the belief, that the storks took their name from the Pelasgi, and that the similarity lay in their habit of settling on the roofs of houses and the like, almost as if inhabitants, in the villages of which the Pelasgi were the first Greek founders. It also gives room for the conjecture that Πελαργοὶ may have been the old form of the name. The stork, it may be remembered, was one of the sacred birds of the Egyptians.

Again, the word πέλαγος has been suggested as supplying the true derivation of the Pelasgian name. Marsh 408 rejects it, because he conceives it is founded upon the hypothesis that the Pelasgi came across the Ægean, which he thinks improbable. But the evidence appears to be in favour of their having come principally by the islands, if not at once across the Ægean. It may also be questioned, whether the etymology must rest on this hypothesis exclusively. For, in the first place, the more natural construction would be, not that they came by sea, but that they came from beyond sea, an idea which might very well attach to any people of Asiatic origin. So it was that the too famous Pelagius, who is known to have been a Welshman, came by his classical name; a name bearing that very signification 409. But is it not also possible, that πέλαγος may at one time have had the meaning of a plain? It properly signifies a wide open level surface, corresponding with the Latin æquor, and with our main. Hence Homer never attaches to the word πέλαγος any of his usual epithets for the sea, such as οἴνοψ, ἠχηεὶς, μεγακήτης, ἀτρύγετος, πολύφλοισβος; but only μέγα, great: and he uses the phrase ἅλος ἐν πελάγεσσι 410, which would be mere tautology, if πέλαγος properly and directly meant the sea. So Pindar has πόντιον πέλαγος, Æschylus ἃλς πελαγία, and Apollonius Rhodius πέλαγος θαλάσσης 411. There were in Macedonia, as we learn from Strabo, a people called Pelagones 412, and in Homer we find the names Πελάγων and Πηλέγων. Again, we have in Hesychius, among the meanings of πελαγίζειν, ψεύδεσθαι μεγάλα, and for πέλαγος he gives μέγεθος, πλῆθος, βύθος; as well as πλάτος θαλάσσης. It seems not impossible that the Pelasgi may owe their name to the word πέλαγος, in its primary sense of plain and open surface: as the word Θρῇξ, in this view its exact counterpart, was derived from τρῆχυς, and at one time meant simply the inhabitant of a rough and rocky place, a mountaineer or highlander.

There is, however, another mode in which Πελασγοὶ may bear the sense of inhabitants of the plain, or rather (for it is in this that the word will most comprehensively apply to them, and most closely keep to its proper meaning), of the cultivable country, which would include valleys as well as plains properly so called: and indeed this derivation, suggested by K. O. Müller, is the simplest possible, if only we can clear the first step, which assumes the identity of Πελασγοὶ and Πελαργοί. He says it is compounded of πέλω and ἄργος. The first meaning of πέλω seems to imply motion with repetition or custom. Afterwards it is to be, and especially to be wont to be. Thus it will, while yet very near its fountain, have the sense, to frequent or inhabit. To the same origin he refers πόλις, πολέω; and also the πελώρια, the harvest feast of Thessaly, taken as the feast of inhabitation 413 or settlement.

The subject of this name will again come into view, when the later name of Ἀργεῖοι is examined. In the mean time, let it be observed, that if the Pelasgi were thus called from being, or if only they in fact were, inhabitants of the plains, we find in this some further explanation of the tradition, which can hardly have been an unmixed error, of their vagrant character. For the plains contained the most fertile soils: and, especially as they were of limited extent, their inhabitants could not but rapidly increase, so as to require more space for the support of their population. Further, these rich tracts offered a prize to all the tribes who were in want of settlements; according to the just observation of Thucydides 414, already quoted, that the most fertile parts of Greece, namely, Bœotia, Thessaly, and much of Peloponnesus, most frequently changed hands. This would be more and more applicable to a given people, in proportion as it might be more addicted to peaceful pursuits. Manifestly, it is as inhabitants of the plains, or the cultivable country, that Homer especially marks the Pelasgi: both by calling the great plain of Thessaly Pelasgic, and by the epithet ἐριβώλαξ which he applies (Il. ii. 841, and xvii. 301), to their Larissa, on the only two occasions when he mentions it. And the etymological inquiry seems, upon the whole, to direct us, although the particular path be somewhat uncertain, towards a similar conclusion.

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