Chapter II: Ethnology (1)

SECT. I.

_Scope of the Inquiry._

I now proceed to attempt, in a series of inquiries, the practical application of the principles which have been stated in the preliminary Essay. The first of these inquiries might on some grounds be deemed the most hazardous. It is an inquiry into the Early Ethnology and Ethnography of Greece: or the Composition of the Greek nation, and the succession and Distribution of its races, according to the text of Homer. The religion, the politics, the manners, the contemporary history, of the Iliad and Odyssey, may justly be considered to form essential parts of the plan of the Poet, and to have been distinctly contemplated by his intention. But into anterior legends he only dips at times: and of the subject of the succession and distribution of races it probably formed no part of his purpose to treat at all; so that in the endeavour to investigate it we are entirely dependent, so far as he is concerned, upon scattered and incidental notices.

But here it is, that the extraordinary sureness and precision of the mind of Homer stands us in such admirable stead. Wherever, amidst the cloud and chaos of pre-Homeric antiquity, he enables us to discern a luminous point, that point is a beacon, and indicates ground on which we may tread with confidence. The materials, which at a first glance appear upon the face of the poems to be available for our purpose, may indeed be but slender. But the careful gathering together of many dispersed indications, and the strict observation of their relative bearings has this effect, that each fragment added to the stock may both receive illustration from what is already known, and may give it in return, by helping to explain and establish relations hitherto doubtful or obscure. And as the total or gross accumulation grows, the nett result increases in a more rapid ratio: as a single known point upon a plane tells us of nothing besides itself, but two enable us to draw a line, and three a triangle, and each further one as it is added to construct a multitude of figures: or as in the map-puzzles, constructed to provoke the ingenuity of children, when once a very few countries have been laid in their right places, they serve as keys to the rest, and we can lay out with confidence the general order. Even so I am not without hope that, as to some parts at least of this ethnical examination, the Homeric indications may, when brought together, warrant our applying to them words used by Cicero for another purpose: _est enim admirabilis continuatio seriesque rerum, ut aliæ ex aliis nexæ, et omnes inter se aptæ conligatæque videantur_[122].

I must not, however, step over the threshold of the investigation without giving warning, that we have to meet at the outset an opinion broadly pronounced, and proceeding from a person of such high authority as Mr. Grote, our most recent historian of Greece, to the effect that these inquiries are futile. This intimation is so important that it shall stand in his own words. “In going through historical Greece,” says Mr. Grote, “we are compelled to accept the Hellenic aggregate with its constituent elements as a primary fact to start from, because the state of our information does not enable us to ascend any higher. By what circumstances, or out of what pre-existing elements, this aggregate was brought together and modified, we find no evidence entitled to credit[123].” And then, in condemnation particularly of Pelasgic inquiries, he resumes: “if any man is inclined to call the unknown ante-Hellenic period of Greece by the name of Pelasgic, it is open to him to do so: but this is a name carrying with it no assured predicates, no way enlarging our insight into real history, nor enabling us to explain--what would be the real historical problem--how or from whom the Hellens acquired that stock of dispositions, aptitudes, arts, &c. with which they began their career.... No attested facts are now present to us--none were present to Herodotus and Thucydides even in their age, on which to build trustworthy affirmations respecting the ante-Hellenic Pelasgians.”

In answer to these passages, which raise the question no less broadly than fairly, it may first be observed, that at least Herodotus and Thucydides did not think what we are thus invited to think for them, and that of the judgment of the latter, as an inquirer into matters of fact, Mr. Grote has himself justly expressed the highest opinion[124]. Mr. Grote, placing in one category all that relates to the legendary age, finds it as a whole intractable and unhistorical, with a predominance of sentimental attributes quite unlike the practical turn and powers of the Greek mind in later times[125]. But has not this disturbance of equilibrium happened chiefly because the genuine though slender historic materials of the heroic age, supplied by the poems of Homer, have been overborne and flooded by the accumulations made by imagination, vanity, resentment, or patriotism, during a thousand years? Even of the unsifted mass of legend, to which the distinguished historian refers, it may be doubted, whether it is not, when viewed as a whole, bewildering, formless, and inconsistent, rather than sentimental. It has been everywhere darkened by cross purposes, and by the unauthorized meddling of generations, which had ceased to sympathize with the heroic age. At any rate, I crave permission to try what we can make of that age in the matter of history, by dealing first and foremost with him who handled it for the purposes of history, apart from those, I mean the after poets, tragedians, and logographers, to whom it was little more than a romance.

I trust that the recent examples of men so learned and able as Bishop Thirlwall and K. O. Müller, neither of whom have thought subjects of this kind too uninviting to reward inquiry, may avail both to prevent the interposition of a preliminary bar to the discussion, and to protect it against an adverse prejudgment. By anticipation I can reasonably make no other answer to a condemnatory sentence, than that which is conveyed in the words ‘let us try.’ But at any rate, _est operæ pretium_: the stake is worth the venture. He would be indeed a worthless biographer who did not, so far as his materials carried him, pursue the life of a hero back to the nursery or even the cradle: and the same faithful and well-grounded instincts invest with a surpassing interest all real elucidation of the facts and ideas, that make up the image of the Greek nation either in its infancy or even in its embryo.

There are three and only three names of ordinary use in the Iliad, by which the poet designates the people that had been banded together against Troy. This same people afterwards became famous in history, perhaps beyond all others, first by the name of Hellenes, which was self-applied; and secondly by the name of Greeks, which they acquired from their Italian conquerors and captives. Greece is now again become Hellas.

These names, prominent far beyond all others, are,

1. Δαναοὶ, Danaans.

2. Ἀργεῖοι, Argeians or Argives.

3. Ἀχαιοὶ, Achæans.

They are commonly treated as synonymous. It appears at least to have been assumed that they are incapable of yielding any practical results to an attempt at historic analysis and distribution. To try this question fully, is a main part of my present purpose. Thus much at least is clear: that they seem to be the equivalents, for the Troic period, of the Hellenic name in later times.

But there are other names, of various classes, which on account of their relations to the foregoing ones it is material to bring into view.

First, there are found in Homer two other designations, which purport to have the same effect as the three already quoted. They are

1. Παναχαιοὶ, Panachæans.

2. Πανέλληνες, Panhellenes.

Next come three names of races, whose relations to the foregoing appellations will demand scrutiny. These are

1. Πελασγοὶ, Pelasgians.

2. Ἕλληνες, Hellenes.

3. Θρῇκες, Thracians, or rather Thraces.

Lastly, there are a more numerous class of names, which are local in this sense, that Homer only mentions them in connection with particular parts of Greece, but which being clearly tribal and not territorial, stand clearly distinguished from the names which owed, or may have owed, their origin to the different cities or districts of the country, such as Phocian (Il. ii. 517), Rhodian (654), Elian (Il. xi. 670), or Ithacan (Odyssey _passim_): and likewise from the names which already were, or afterwards came to be, in established connection with those of districts, though they have no appearance of having been originally territorial: such as Arcadian (Il. ii. 603, 611), Bœotian (Il. ii. 494), Athenian (Il. ii. 546, 551).

Of the class now before us there are some which are of importance in various degrees with regard to the views of primitive history to be gathered from the Homeric poems. As such I rank

1. Καδμεῖοι, Cadmeans, in Thebes, Il. iv. 388 and elsewhere: and with this, as an equivalent, Καδμείωνες, Il. iv. 385 and elsewhere.

2. Ἰάονες, Ionians, in Athens, Il. xiii. 685.

3. Δωριέες, Dorians, in Crete, Od. xix. 177. A town Dorion is also mentioned in the Catalogue as within the territories of Nestor, Il. ii. 594.

4. Κεφάλληνες, Cephallenes, in the islands under Ulysses, Il. ii. 631.

5. Ἐφυροὶ, Ephyri, in Thessaly, Il. xiii. 301.

6. Σελλοὶ or Ἑλλοὶ, Helli, in northern Thessaly, Il. xvi. 234.

7. Καύκωνες, Caucones, in southern Greece, Od. iii. 366: (and among the Trojan allies, Il. x. 429, xx. 329.)

8. Ἐπεῖοι, Epeans, in Elis, Il. ii. 619, and on the opposite or northern coast and islands of the Corinthian Gulf: compare Il. ii. 627, and xiii. 691.

9. Ἄβαντες, Abantes, in Eubœa, Il. ii. 536.

10. Μυρμίδονες, Myrmidones, in Phthia, Il. ii. 684.

11. Κουρῆτες, Curetes, in Ætolia, Il. ix. 529.

12. Φλεγύαι, Phlegyæ, in Thessaly, Il. xiii. 301.

13. Φῆρες, in Thessaly, Il. i. 267, 8, ii. 733, 4.

And lastly it may be mentioned that in the single word Γραῖα, used (Il. ii. 498) to designate one of the numerous Bœotian towns, we have an isolated indication of the existence in the heroic times of the germ of the names _Greece_ and _Greek_, which afterwards ascended to, and still retain, such extraordinary fame.

The Homeric text will afford us means of investigation, more or less, for the greater part of these names, but the main thread of the inquiry runs with these five; Pelasgians, Hellenes, Danaans, Argeians, Achæans.

In conjunction with the present subject, I shall consider what light is thrown by Homer on the relations of the Greeks with other races not properly Greek: the Lycians, the Phœnicians, the Sicels, the Egyptians, the people of Cyprus, and finally the Persians. The name of the Leleges will be considered in conjunction with that of the Caucones.

FOOTNOTES:

[122] Cic. de Nat. Deor. i. 4.

[123] Grote’s Hist. vol. ii. pp. 349-51, part ii. ch. 2.

[124] Preface p. ix.

[125] Preface p. xvii.

SECT. II.

_The Pelasgians; and with these_,

_a._ Arcadians. _b._ Γραικοὶ or Græci. _c._ Ionians. _d._ Athenians.
_e._ Egyptians. _f._ Thraces. _g._ Caucones. _h._ Leleges.

It will be most convenient to begin with the case of the Pelasgians: and the questions we shall have to investigate will be substantially reducible to the following heads:

1. Are the Pelasgians essentially Greek?

2. If so, what is their relation to the Hellenes, and to the integral Greek nation?

3. What elements did they contribute to the formation of the composite body thus called?

4. What was their language?

5. What was the derivation of their name?

6. By what route did they come into Greece?

The direct evidence of the Homeric poems with respect to the Pelasgians is scattered and faint. It derives however material aid from various branches of tradition, partly conveyed in the Homeric poems, and partly extraneous to them, particularly religion, language, and pursuits. Evidence legitimately drawn from these latter sources, wherever it is in the nature of circumstantial proof, is far superior in authority to such literary traditions as are surrounded, at their visible source, with circumstances of uncertainty.

_The Pelasgians._

I. The first passage, with which we have to deal, is that portion of the Catalogue of the Greek armament, where Homer introduces us to the contingent of Achilles in the following lines:

Νῦν αὖ τοὺς ὅσσοι τὸ Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος ἔναιον,
Οἵ τ’ Ἄλον οἵ τ’ Ἀλόπην οἵ τε Τρηχῖν’ ἐνέμοντο,
Οἵ τ’ εἶχον Φθίην ἠδ’ Ἑλλάδα καλλιγύναικα,
Μυρμιδόνες δὲ καλεῦντο καὶ Ἕλληνες καὶ Ἀχαιοὶ,
Τῶν αὖ πεντήκοντα νεῶν ἦν ἀρχὸς Ἀχιλλεύς[126].

All evidence goes to show, that Thessaly stood in a most important relation to the infant life of the Greek races; whether we consider it as the seat of many most ancient legends; as dignified by the presence of Dodona, the highest seat of religious tradition and authority to the Greeks; as connected with the two ancient names of Helli and Pelasgi: or lastly in regard to the prominence it retained even down to and during the historic age in the constitution of the Amphictyonic Council[127]. All these indications are in harmony with the course of Greek ethnological tradition.

Now the Catalogue of the Greek armament is divided into three great sections.

The first comprises Continental Greece, with the islands immediately adjacent to the coast, and lying south of Thessaly. The second consists of the Greek islands of the Ægean. The third is wholly Thessalian: and it begins with the lines which have been quoted.

_The Pelasgians: Pelasgic Argos._

What then does Homer mean us to understand by the phrase τὸ Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος in this passage? Is it

1. A mere town, or town and district, like Alos, Alope, and others which follow; or is it

2. A country comprising several or many such?

And if the latter, does it describe

1. That country only over which Peleus reigned, and which supplied the Myrmidon division; or

2. A more extended country?

First let us remark the use of the article. It is not the manner of Homer to employ the article with the proper names of places. We may be sure that it carries with it a distinctive force: as in the Trojan Catalogue he employs it to indicate a particular race or body of Pelasgians[128] apart from others. Now the distinctive force of the article here may have either or both of two bearings.

1. It may mark off the Argos of the Pelasgians from one or more other countries or places bearing the name of Argos.

2. Even independently of the epithet, the article may be rightly employed, if Argos itself be not strictly a proper name, but rather a descriptive word indicating the physical character of a given region. Thus ‘Scotland’ is strictly a proper name, ‘Lowlands’ a descriptive word of this nature: and the latter takes the article where the former does not require or even admit it. And now let us proceed to make our selection between the various alternatives before us.

Whichever of the two bearings we give to the article, it seems of itself to preclude the supposition that a mere town or single settlement can be here intended: for nowhere does Homer give the article to a name of that class.

Secondly, in almost every place where Homer speaks of an Argos, he makes it plain that he does not mean a mere town or single settlement, but a country including towns or settlements within it. The exceptions to this rule are rare. In Il. iv. 52 we have one of them, where he combines Argos with Sparta and Mycenæ, and calls all three by the name of cities. The line Il. ii. 559 probably supplies another. But in a later Section[129] the general rule will be fully illustrated.

It will also clearly appear, that the name Argos is in fact a descriptive word, not a proper name, and is nearly equivalent to our ‘Lowlands’ or to the Italian ‘campagna.’

Thirdly: in many other places of the Catalogue, Homer begins by placing in the front, as it were, the comprehensive name which overrides and includes the particular names that are to follow; and then, without any other distinctive mark than the use of the faint enclitic copulative τε, proceeds to enumerate parts included within the whole which he has previously named. Thus for instance

οἱ δ’ Εὔβοιαν ἔχον ...
Χαλκίδα τ’ Εἰρετρίαν τε κ.τ.λ.

v. 535, 6.

‘Those who held Eubœa, both Chalcis and Eretria’.... Or in the English idiom we may perhaps write more correctly, ‘Those who held Eubœa, that is to say Chalcis, and Eretria’ ... and the rest.

Again,

οἱ δ’ εἶχον κοιλὴν Λακεδαίμονα κητώεσσαν
Φᾶρίν τε Σπάρτην τε ...

v. 581, 2.

‘Those who held channelled Laconia, abounding in wild beasts, namely, the several settlements of Pharis and Sparta,’ and the rest.

So with Arcadia, v. 603, and Ithaca, v. 631.

We may therefore consider the verse 681,

Νῦν αὖ τοὺς, ὅσσοι τὸ Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος ἔναιον·

as prefatory, and I print it, accordingly, so as to mark a pause.

But, again, is it prefatory only to the division of Achilles, and is it simply the integer expressing the whole territory from which his contingent was drawn, or is it prefatory to the whole remainder of the Catalogue, ending at v. 759, and does it include all the nine territorial divisions described therein? There is no grammatical or other reason for the former alternative, while various considerations recommend the latter.

There is no sign in the poems of any connection between Achilles with his Myrmidons, or between the kingdom of his father Peleus, and any particular part of Thessaly under the name of Argos, or Pelasgic Argos. Although the division of Achilles did not embrace the whole of the Phthians[130], yet Phthia appears to be the proper description of his territory, so far as it has a collective name: and there are signs, which will be hereafter considered, that the name of Phthia itself was embraced and included within the wider range of another name.

Again, the Pelasgic name, as will be further observed, is not in Homer specially connected with the South of Thessaly, where the realm of Peleus lay, but rather with the North, the towns and settlements of which are enumerated, not in the first, but in the later paragraphs of this portion of the Catalogue.

In the invocation of the Sixteenth Book, to which reference will shortly be made, Achilles at once addresses Jupiter as Pelasgic, and as dwelling afar (τηλόθι ναίων): therefore, the special Thessalian seat of the god could not be in the dominions of Peleus.

We have observed, again, in the earlier parts of the catalogue various collective names, afterwards explained distributively, for the various contingents: but there is not one of this class of names employed for any of the Eight Divisions which follow that of Achilles. They all seem to bear the form of particular distributive enumerations, belonging to the comprehensive head of Pelasgic Argos or Thessaly.

There is also something in the obvious break in the Catalogue, signified by the words

νῦν αὖ τοὺς ὅσσοι ...

which indicate, as it were, a completely new starting point. There is nothing else resembling them. They form the introduction to a new chapter of the lists, after a geographical transition from the islands: and there is no reason for these marked words, if Pelasgic Argos was either a mere town district, or a local sovereignty, but a very good reason, if Pelasgic Argos meant that great integral portion of the Greek territory, the vale of Thessaly, the particular parts of which the Poet was about to set forth in so much detail.

It may therefore be inferred, that the epithet Πελασγικὸν is applied by Homer to the Thessalian vale collectively, as it is contained between the mountains of Pindus to the west, Œta and Olympus to the north, Othrys to the south, and Ossa or the sea to the east. We might, without geographical error, translate the phrase τὸ Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος of the second Iliad by that name of Thessaly[131], which the country afterwards acquired: but the idea which it properly indicates to us, is, _that Argos which had been settled by the Pelasgians_.

It is the only geographical epithet which, applied to the name Argos, belongs to the north of Greece: and it is so applied by way of distinction and opposition to other uses of the name Argos in other parts of the poems, which we shall hereafter have to examine, namely, the Achaic and the Iasian Argos.

_The Pelasgians: Dodona._

II. Perhaps the most solemn invocation of Jupiter as the great deity of the Greeks in the whole of the Poems is where Achilles, sending forth Patroclus to battle, prays that glory may be given him. It runs thus (Il. xvi. 233-5):

Ζεῦ ἄνα, Δωδωναῖε, Πελασγικὲ, τηλόθι ναίων,
Δωδώνης μεδέων δυσχειμέρου· ἀμφὶ δέ σ’ Ἕλλοι
σοὶ ναίουσ’ ὑποφῆται ἀνιπτόποδες χαμαιεῦναι.

It seems not too much to say upon this remarkable passage, that it shows us, as it were, the nation pitching its first altar upon its first arrival in the country. It bears witness that those who brought the worship of Dodonæan Jupiter were Pelasgians, as well as that the spot, which they chose for the principal seat of their worship, was Dodona. For the appeal of Achilles on this occasion is evidently the most forcible that he has it in his power to make, and is addressed to the highest source of Divine power that he knew.

It has been debated, but apparently without any conclusive result, what was the site of the Dodona so famous in the after-times of Greece[132]. It seems clear, however, that it was a Dodona to the westward of Pindus, and belonging to Thesprotia or Molossia. But this plainly was not the position of the Dodona we have now before us. For in a passage of the Catalogue Homer distinctly places this Dodona in Thessaly, giving it the same epithet, δυσχείμερος, as Achilles applies to it in Il. xvi. Gouneus, he says, was followed by the Enienes and Perrhæbi,

οἱ περὶ Δωδώνην δυσχείμερον οἴκι’ ἔθεντο,
οἵ τ’ ἀμφ’ ἱμερτὸν Τιταρήσιον ἔργ’ ἐνέμοντο[133].

Both the name of the Perrhæbi and that of the river Titaresius fix the Dodona of Homer in the north of Thessaly. And the character assigned to this Titaresius, so near Dodona, as a branch of Styx, ‘the mighty adjuration of the gods,’ well illustrates the close connection between that river, by which the other deities were to swear, and Jupiter, who was their chief, and was in a certain sense the administrator of justice among them. In the Odyssey, indeed, Ulysses, in his fictitious narrations to Eumæus and Penelope, represents himself as having travelled from Thesprotia to consult the oracle of Jupiter, that was delivered from a lofty oak[134]. But no presumption of nearness can be founded on this passage such as to justify our assuming the existence of a separate Dodona westward of the mountains in the Homeric age: and there was no reason why Ulysses should not represent himself as travelling through the passes of Mount Pindus[135] from the Ambracian gulf into Thessaly to learn his fate. Nor upon the other hand is there any vast difficulty in adopting the supposition which the evidence in the case suggests, that the oracle of Dodonæan Jupiter may have changed its seat before the historic age. The evidence of Homer places it in Thessaly, and Homer is, as we shall see, corroborated by Hesiod. After them, we hear nothing of a Dodona having its seat in Thessaly, but much of one on the western side of the peninsula. As in later times we find Perrhæbi and Dolopes to the westward of Pindus, whom Homer shows us only on the east, even so in the course of time the oracle may have travelled in the same direction[136]. It is highly improbable, from the manner in which the name is used, that there should have been two Greek Dodonas in the Homeric age.

However, the very passage before us indicates, that revolution had already laid its hand on this ancient seat of Greek religion. For though the Dodona of Homer was Pelasgic by its origin, its neighbourhood was now inhabited by a different race, the Selli or Helli, and these Helli were also the ὑποφῆται or ministers of the deity. While their rude and filthy habits of life mark them as probably a people of recent arrival, who had not themselves yet emerged from their highland home, and from the struggle with want and difficulty, into civilized life, still they had begun to encroach upon the Pelasgians with their inviting possessions and more settled habits, and had acquired by force or otherwise the control of the temple, though without obliterating the tradition of its Pelasgic origin. The very fact, that the Helli were at the time the ministers of Jupiter, tends to confirm the belief that the Pelasgians were those who originally established it; for how otherwise could the name of the Pelasgian race have found its way into an Hellenic invocation?

Thus, as before we found that what we term Thessaly is to Homer ‘the Argos of the Pelasgians,’ so we now find that people associated with the original and central worship of the Greek Jupiter, as having probably been the race to whom it owed its establishment.

And thus, though the Pelasgians were not politically predominant in Thessaly at the epoch of the _Troica_, yet Thessaly is Pelasgian Argos: though they were not possessed of the Dodonæan oracle, yet Jupiter of Dodona is Pelasgian Jupiter: two branches of testimony, the first of which exhibits them as the earliest known colonisers of the country, and the second as the reputed founders of the prime article of its religion.

We must not quit this subject without referring to the evidence of Hesiod, which, though second in importance to that of Homer, is before any other literary testimony. He refers twice to Dodona. Neither time does he appear to carry it to the westward. In one passage he connects it immediately with the Pelasgians;

Δωδώνην, φῆγόν τε, Πελασγῶν ἕδρανον, ἧκεν[137].

In the other passage, he associates it with the Hellic name through the medium of the territorial designation Hellopia:

ἐστί τις Ἑλλοπίη πολυλήϊος ἠδ’ εὐλείμων,
ἔνθα τε Δωδώνη τις ἐπ’ ἐσχατίῃ πεπόλισται[138].

Thus, in exact accordance with Homer, he associates Dodona with two and only two names of race, the same two as those with which it is associated in the invocation of Achilles.

_Thessaly and the Southern Islands._

III. Next, we find in Homer a widely spread connection between Thessaly and the islands which form as it were the base of the Ægean sea.

From these islands he enumerates four contingents furnished to the Greek army:

1. From Crete, under Idomeneus (Il. ii. 645).

2. From Rhodes, under Tlepolemus (653).

3. From Syme, under Nireus (671).

4. From Nisyrus, the Calydnæ, and other minor islands, under Pheidippus and Antiphus (676).

1. As to Crete. Universal tradition connects the name of Deucalion with Thessaly. But he was the son, according to Homer, of Minos, who was the ruler or warden of Crete (Κρήτῃ ἐπίουρος, Il. xiii. 450): and he was also the father of Idomeneus, leader of the Cretans before Troy (Il. xiii. 452), and ruler over many of them (ibid.), but not, so far as appears, over the whole island.

Now Minos was not only king of all Crete, but son of Jupiter (ibid., and Od. xi. 568) by a Phœnician damsel of great note (Il. xiv. 321); we must therefore regard him, or his mother, as having come from Phœnicia into Crete. The inference would be, that Deucalion came from Crete to Thessaly, and that he, or Idomeneus his son, re-migrated to Crete. Homer does not indeed state that Deucalion was ever in Thessaly: but he indirectly supports the tradition both by placing Idomeneus in a different position in Crete from that of his grandfather Minos, and otherwise[139]. This supposition would at once reconcile the later tradition with Homer, and explain to us why the grandson of Minos only filled an inferior position.

Again, as we see that Thessaly is Pelasgic, and that the Thessalian Myrmidons are called Achæans, so likewise we find among the five nations of Crete both Pelasgians and Achæans[140]. Here, according to Strabo, Staphylus described these two races as inhabiting the plains, and Andron reported them, as also the Dorians, to have come from Thessaly: erroneously, says Strabo (x. 4., p. 476), making the mother city of the Dorians a mere colony from the Thessalians. And the ancient tradition which places the infant Jupiter in Crete (‘Jovis incunabula Creten’), concurs with the idea which the above-named facts would suggest, that the Pelasgians may have come, at least in part, from the southern islands of the Ægean.

2. As to Rhodes. Tlepolemus, its chieftain, is the son of Hercules, and of Astyochea, whom, in the course of his raids, he took from Ephyra by the river Selleeis. It is questioned which Ephyra, and which Selleeis, for of both there were several, these may have been. If they were in Thessaly[141], we have thus a line of connection established between Thessaly and Rhodes.

3. As to the contingent from Nisyrus, the Calydnæ, and Cos. Firstly, it was commanded by Pheidippus and Antiphus (678), sons of Thessalus, the son of Hercules. The connection between Hercules and Thessaly, which is agreeable to the general course of tradition, also harmonises with the most natural construction which can be put upon this passage of Homer: namely, that this Thessalus was the person who afterwards became the eponymist of Thessaly, that he was a native or inhabitant of the country, and that either he, or more probably his sons, were emigrants from it to the islands.

His name, latent for a time, may afterwards have attained to its elevation, as a means of connecting Thessaly with Hercules, when the descendants of that hero had become predominant in the South. Perhaps the appearance of the post-Homeric name ‘Doris’ may be explained in the same manner.

Secondly, Cos is described as the city of Eurypylus. This may mean a city which he had founded; or a city which was then actually under his dominion. Beyond all doubt, it indicates a very special connection of some kind between Cos and Eurypylus. Now, his name is mentioned without adjunct. Had he been a deceased founder of the city, he would probably have been called θεῖος like Thoas (Il. xiv. 230). If he was living, who was he? We have in the Iliad one very famous Eurypylus, who appears among the nine foremost of the Greek heroes (Il. vii. 167), and whose rank entitled him (xi. 818) to be called Διοτρεφής; an epithet confined, as is probable, to Kings[142]. Now although Homer allows himself, when he is dealing with secondary persons, to apply the same name to more than one individual, without always caring to discriminate between them, there is no instance in which he does this for a person of the class of Eurypylus. This probably, therefore, is the same Eurypylus, as meets us in other parts of the poem, the son of Euæmon. But from the Catalogue[143], it appears that he commanded the contingent from Ormenium in Thessaly. If then, the same person, who founded or had some special relation to Cos, was also the commander of a Thessalian force, here we have a new track of connection between Thessaly and the islands to the southward.

4. Nireus, named by Homer for his beauty alone, with his three ships from Syme, can scarcely be said to make an unit in the Greek catalogue.

With this one inconsiderable exception, we find in all the cases of island contingents a connection subsisting between them and Thessaly, and this connection not appearing to be mediate, along the line of mainland which reaches from Thessaly to within a short distance from Crete, but apparently maintained directly by the maritime route: a fact of importance in considering the probable extension and movement of the Pelasgic race, which we find existing in both regions. We know from Homer[144] that the southern islands were a common route connecting Greece with the East. There are also abundant traces of migration by the northern coast of the Ægean. Thus it is at both those gates of Greece, that we find the Pelasgian name subsisting in the time of Homer, when in the nearer vicinity of the centre of Achæan power it was already extinct.

_The Pelasgians._

IV. Again, I think we may trace the near connection between the Pelasgians and the Greek nation in the laudatory epithets with which the former are mentioned by Homer. We must here keep in mind on the one hand the extraordinary skill and care with which the Poet employed his epithets, and on the other hand, his never failing solicitude to exalt and adorn every thing Greek.

Homer names the Pelasgians only thrice, and each time with a laudatory epithet.

In Il. x. 429, where they form part of the Trojan camp, and again in Od. xix. 177, where they are stated to be found in Crete, they are δῖοι. Homer never applies this word except to what is preeminent in its kind: in particular, he never attaches it to any national name besides the Pelasgi, except Ἀχαιοὶ, which of itself amounts to a presumption that he regarded his countrymen as in some way standing in the same class with the Pelasgians.

In the remaining passage where he names the Pelasgians, that in the Trojan Catalogue (Il. ii. 340), he calls them ἐγχεσίμωροι. He uses this epithet in only three other places. Of itself it is laudatory, because it is connected with the proper work of heroes, the σταδίη ὑσμίνη. In one of the three places he applies it individually to two royal warriors, one Munes the husband of Briseis, and the other Epistrophus (Il. ii. 693), a warrior associated with Munes. In the second (Il. vii. 134), he gives it to the Arcadians; whom in the Catalogue (ii. 611), he has already commended as ἐπιστάμενοι πολεμίζειν. In the third passage (Od. iii. 188), he applies the epithet to the Myrmidons themselves. From each of these uses, the last especially, we may draw fresh presumptions of his high estimate of the Pelasgian name.

V. Again. In the case of a race, unless when it can be traced to an Eponymus or name-giver, the plural name precedes the singular in common use. There must be Celts before there can be a Celt, and Pelasgians before there can be a Pelasgian. The use therefore of the singular, in the names of nations, is a proof of what is established and long familiar.

For example, Homer never calls a single Greek Δαναός, nor Ἀργεῖος (though in the particular cases of Juno and of Helen he uses the singular feminine, of which more hereafter), but only Ἀχαιός; and we shall find, that this fact is not without its meaning. It is therefore worthy of note, that he uses the term Πελασγὸς in the singular. The chiefs of the Pelasgian ἐπίκουροι at Troy were Hippothous and Pulæus, (Il. ii. 843,) who were

υἷε δύω Λήθοιο Πελασγοῦ Τευταμίδαο.

And again, (xvii. 288),

Λήθοιο Πελασγοῦ φαίδιμος υἷος.

‘The illustrious son of Lethus the Pelasgian.’ It seems uncertain, from their place in the Trojan Catalogue, whether these Pelasgians were European or Asiatic; nor is it material to which region they belonged.

_The Pelasgians and Larissa._

VI. It is further observable, that Homer implies distinctly the existence of various tribes of Pelasgi under that same name in various and widely separated places. He says,

Ἱππόθοος δ’ ἄγε φῦλα Πελασγῶν ἐγχεσιμώρων
τῶν, οἱ Λαρίσσην ἐριβώλακα ναιετάουσιν.

Strabo justly observes upon the use of the plural φῦλα in this passage as implying considerable numbers. And the words τῶν οἱ in the following line, signifying “namely those Pelasgi, who,” show that the poet found it necessary to use a distinctive mark in order that these Pelasgi might not be confounded with other Pelasgi. Again, as this is in the Trojan Catalogue, where as a matter of course no Greeks would be found, he could hardly need to distinguish them from any Pelasgi connected with the Greeks, and we may assume it as most probable that he meant thus to distinguish them from other Pelasgi out of Greece rather than in Greece. At the same time, he may have had regard to other Pelasgians of Pelasgic Argos. In that country, as we may conclude with confidence from the appellation itself, they were known to form the bulk of the population, and as we hear of no such Pelasgian mass elsewhere in Homer, he may possibly have had them particularly in his mind, when he described the Trojan Pelasgians as Pelasgians of Larissa.

Some light is also thrown upon the character and habits of nations by the epithets attached to their places of abode. Homer mentions Larissa but twice: once here, and once where he relates the death of Hippothous, τῆλ’ ἀπὸ Λαρίσσης ἐριβώλακος (Il. xvii. 301). The fertility of Larissa tends, as far as it goes, to mark the Pelasgi as a people of cultivators, having settled habits of life.

There is some difficulty, however, connected with the particular sign which Homer has employed to distinguish these Pelasgians. ‘Hippothous led the Pelasgi, those Pelasgi, I mean, who inhabit productive Larissa.’ From this it would appear that in the days of Homer, though there were many Pelasgi in various places, there was but one Larissa. And, accordingly, the name never appears within the Greece of Homer, either in the Catalogue, or elsewhere. Yet tradition hands down to us many Larissas, both in Greece and beyond it: and critics hold it to be reasonably presumed, wherever we find a Larissa, that there Pelasgi had been settled. But this name of Larissa apparently was not, and probably could not have been, thus largely employed in Homer’s time; for if it had been so, the poet’s use of the term Larissa would not have been in this case what he meant it to be, namely, distinctive. Yet the Pelasgians were even at that time apparently falling, or even fallen, into decay. How then could they have built many new cities in the subsequent ages? And, except in that way, how could the name Larissa have revived, and acquired its peculiar significance?

In six places of the Iliad we hear of a particular part of the city of Troy which was built upon a height, and in which the temple of Apollo was situated (v. 446). This affords us an example of a separate name, Πέργαμος, affixed to a separate part of a city, that part apparently being the citadel. In like manner the citadel of Argos (which stood upon an eminence) had, at a later date, a distinct name, which was Larissa[145], and was said to have been derived from a daughter of Pelasgus so called[146]. Now it may have been the general rule to call the citadels of the Pelasgian towns Larissa. If so, then we can readily understand that so long as the towns themselves, or rather, it might be, the scattered hamlets, remained, the name of the citadels would be rarely heard: but when the former fell into decay, the solid masonry which the Pelasgi used for walls and for public buildings, but which did not extend to private dwellings, would remain. Thus the citadels would naturally retain their own old name, which had been originally attached to them with reference to their fortifications. This hypothesis will fully account for the absorption of the particular and separate names of towns in the original and common name of their citadels.

Where an agricultural settlement was made upon ground, some particular spot of which afforded easy means of fortification, convenience would probably dictate the erection of a citadel for occasional retreat in time of danger, without any attempt to gather closely into one place and surround with walls the residences of the settlers: a measure which, as entailing many disadvantages, was only likely to take place under the pressure of strong necessity. Such I have presumed to have been the ordinary history of the Pelasgian Larissas. That which, while it flourished as a Pelasgian settlement, might be an Argos[147], would, perhaps, after a conquest, and the changes consequent upon it, become at last a Larissa.

But cases might arise in which the most fertile lands, lying entirely open and level, would, on the one hand, offer peculiar temptations to the spoiler, and, on the other, offer no scarped or elevated spot suitable for a separate fortification. In such a case the name ἐριβώλαξ would be best deserved, and in such a case too the probable result would be, to build a walled town including all the habitations of the colonists. This walled town would, for the very same reason as the citadels elsewhere, be itself a Larissa: and thus this Pelasgian name might be a distinctive one in the time of Homer, and yet might become a common one afterwards.

All this corresponds with the general belief on the two points, (1) that the Pelasgians dwelt, as in Attica, κωμηδὸν, and (2) that the Larissas are Pelasgian.

But moreover it is supported by particular instances. Troy, for example, had its Pergama on a lofty part of the site where it stood: and from the epithets αἰπείνη, ὀφρυόεσσα, ἠνεμόεσσα, applied to the name Ἴλιος but never to Τροίη (of course I mean when this latter word is used for the city, the only class of cases in point), it may justly be inferred that Ilus[148] built the Pergama when he migrated into the plain. But the wall surrounding the entire city was only built in the next generation, under King Laomedon, who employed Neptune and Apollo for the purpose.

Another, and perhaps more marked instance, is to be found in the case of Thebes. We know from Thucydides[149] that Bœotia was, from its openness and fertility, more liable to revolutions from successive occupancy than other parts of Greece. With this statement a passage of the Odyssey[150] is in remarkable accordance. Homer tells us that Amphion and Zethus, probably among the very earliest Hellic immigrants into Middle Greece, first settled on the site of Thebes; and, he adds specially, that they fortified it. But apparently it could not have been the usual practice of the time to surround entire cities, at least, with fortifications, because he goes on to assign the special reason for its being done in this case, namely, that, even powerful as they were, they could not hold that country, so open (εὐρύχορος, Od. xi. 265) and rich, except with the aid of walls. This would appear to be a case like the Λαρίσση ἐριβώλαξ of the seventeenth Iliad, and both alike were probably exceptions to the general rule.

I have now done with the direct notices of the Pelasgi in Homer. But we have still a considerable harvest of indirect notices to gather. Particularly, in discussing the meaning of the name Ionians, we shall hereafter find reason to suppose that Homer’s Athenians were Pelasgic: and I propose here to refer to some similar indications with respect to the Arcadians.

_The Arcadians in Homer._

Like the Pelasgians, the Arcadians are, as we have seen, happy in never being mentioned without Homer’s commendation. In Il. ii. 611 they are ἐπιστάμενοι πολεμίζειν. In Il. vii. 134 they are ἐγχεσίμωροι.

_The Arcadians Pelasgian._

In the Catalogue he also throws some light upon the habits of the Arcadians: first, by describing them as heavy armed, ἀγχιμάχηται: secondly, by stating that they had no care for maritime pursuits. In both respects their relation to the Trojans is remarkable. With the exception of the Arcadians, the epithet ἀγχιμάχηται is nowhere used except for the substantive Δάρδανοι, and the position of the Dardanians in Troas very much corresponded with that of the Arcadians in Greece. Again, the Trojans, as we know, were so entirely destitute of ships, that Paris had to build them by way of special undertaking. These resemblances tend to suggest a further likeness. As the Trojans appear to have been peculiarly given to the pursuits of peace, it is reasonable to suppose the poet had the same idea of the Arcadians. The ἀγχιμάχηται is connected with the habits of settled cultivators. A peasantry furnishes heavy infantry, while light troops are best formed from a population of less settled habits and ruder manners. And as the use of ships had much less to do with regular commerce than with piracy and war,[151] so the absence of maritime habits tends, for the heroic age, to imply a pacific character. In those days the principal purpose of easy locomotion was booty: and there was no easy locomotion for bodies of men, except by ships. Though inclosed by hills, Arcadia was a horse feeding[152], therefore relatively not a poor country. In later times it was, next to Laconia[153], the most populous province of the Peloponnesus; and even in Homer, although its political position was evidently secondary, it supplied no less than sixty ships with large crews to each[154]. All this is favourable to the tradition which gives it a Pelasgian character.

Again, the Arcadians were commanded by Agapenor the son of Ancæus[155]. He would appear not to have been an indigenous sovereign. For we learn from a speech of Nestor in the twenty-third Book[156], that games were celebrated at the burial of Amarynceus by the Epeans, in which he himself overcame in wrestling Ancæus the Pleuronian. Ancæus therefore was not an Arcadian but an Ætolian: and his son Agapenor was probably either the first Arcadian of his race, or else a stranger appointed by Agamemnon to command the Arcadians in the Trojan war. Their having ships from Agamemnon, and a chief either foreign or of non-Arcadian extraction, are facts which tend to mark the Arcadians as politically dependent, and therefore _pro tanto_ as Pelasgian: for it cannot be doubted that whatever in Greece was Pelasgian at the epoch of the _Troica_, was also subordinate to some race of higher and more effective energies.

Again. It will hereafter (I think) be found that the institution of all gymnastic and martial games was Hellenic and not Pelasgic[157]. In the passage last quoted there is a very remarkable statement, that there were present at the games Epeans, Pylians, and Ætolians: that is to say, all the neighbouring tribes, except the Arcadians. Thus we have a strong presumption established that these games were not congenial to Arcadian habits: and if the same can be shown from other sources with respect to the Pelasgians, there is a strong presumption that the Arcadians were themselves Pelasgian.

Once more. In the sixth book Nestor relates, that in his youth the Pylians and Arcadians fought near the town of Pheiæ and the river Iardanos. The Arcadians were commanded by Ereuthalion, who wore the armour of Areithous. Areithous had met his death by stratagem from Lycoorgos, who appropriated the armour, and bequeathed it to his θεραπών, or companion in arms, Ereuthalion. Nestor, on the part of the Pylians, encountered Ereuthalion, and by the aid of Minerva defeated him.

From this tale it would appear, first, that Lycoorgus was king of Arcadia. His name savours of Pelasgian origin, from its relation to Λυκαών of the later tradition respecting Arcadia, and to Lycaon son of Priam, descended by the mother’s side from the Leleges; again, to Lycaon the father of Pandarus; possibly also to the inhabitants of Lycia. The allusion to his having succeeded by stratagem only, is very pointed (148),

τὸν Λυκόοργος ἔπεφνε δόλῳ, οὔτι κράτεΐ γε,

and the terms employed appear to indicate a military inferiority: which accords with the probable relation of the Arcadians, as Pelasgi, to their Hellenic neighbours. And this again corresponds with the close of the story; in which Nestor, fighting on the part of the Pylians who were Achæan, and therefore Hellenic, conquers the Arcadian chieftain Ereuthalion (Il. vi. 132-56).

It may be remarked once for all, that this military inferiority is not to be understood as if the Pelasgi were cowards, but simply as implying that they gave way before tribes of more marked military genius or habits than themselves; as at Hastings the Saxons did before the Normans; or as the Russians did in the late war of 1854-6 before the Western armies.

Lastly, the δῖος applied to Ereuthalion (Il. v. 319), accords with the use of that epithet for the Pelasgi elsewhere.

Thus a number of indications from Homer, slight when taken separately, but more considerable when combined, and drawn from _all_ the passages in which Homer refers to Arcadia, converge upon the supposition that the Arcadians were a Pelasgian people.

They are supported by the whole stream of later tradition; which placed Lycaon, son of Pelasgus, in Arcadia, which uniformly represented the Arcadians as autochthonic[158], and which made them competitors with the Argives for the honour of having given to the Pelasgians their original seat in the Peloponnesus.

Here too philology steps in, and lends us some small aid. The name of Προσέληνοι, which the Arcadians took to themselves, and which is assumed to mean older than the moon, appears, when so understood, to express a very forced idea: it is difficult indeed to conceive how such a name could even creep into use. But if we refer its origin to πρὸ and Σελλοὶ or Σέλληνες, it then becomes the simple indication of the historical fact we are looking for, namely, that they, a Pelasgic population, occupied Arcadia before any of the Hellic or Sellic races had come into the Peloponnesus.

From its rich pastures, Arcadia was originally well adapted for Pelasgian inhabitants. Defended by mountains, it offered, as Attica did through the poverty of its soil, an asylum to the refugees of that race, when dispossessed from other still more fertile, and perhaps also more accessible tracts of the Peloponnesus[159]. Hence it is easy to account both for its original Pelasgian character, and for the long retention of it.

We seem then to find the Arcadians of Homer (first) politically dependent, and (secondly) commanded by a foreigner, but yet (thirdly) valiant in war. It would thus appear that what they wanted was not animal or even moral courage, but the political and governing element, which is the main element in high martial talent. All this we shall find, as we already have in some degree found, to be a Pelasgian portraiture. And if it should seem to have been drawn with the aid of conjecture, let it at any rate be observed that it is supported by the Arcadian character in the historic ages. They appear from various indications to have been for many generations the Swiss of Greece: not producing great commanders, and obscure enough, until a very late date, in the political annals of the country, but abounding in the materials of a hardy soldiery, and taking service with this or that section of the Greeks as chance might dictate. For in Xenophon they boast that when any of the Greeks wanted auxiliaries (ἐπίκουροι) they came to Arcadia to obtain them: that the Lacedæmonians took them into company when they invaded Attica, and that the Thebans did the very same when they invaded Lacedæmon[160]. And Thucydides tells us that, in the Sicilian war, the Mantineans, with a portion of their brother Arcadians, fought for hire with the Athenians on one side, while another contingent from the very same State assisted the Corinthians, who had come in force to aid in the defence of Syracuse against them[161].

_The Graians: the Pelasgians and Ceres._

Two other circumstances, slight in themselves, still remain for notice.

1. It was through the authority and practice of the Romans that the name of Greeks or Graians came ultimately to supplant that of Hellenes. Out of this fact, which is the most important piece of evidence in our possession, arises the presumption, that as it was the Pelasgians who may be said to have supplied the main link between Greece and Italy, and between the Hellenic and the Roman language, the Graians could not but have been a branch or portion of that people. Now we know that the Pelasgians were cultivators of the plains. Bœotia is, as we have seen, indicated by Thucydides[162] as the richest plain[163] of Greece, and on that account among the parts most liable to the displacement of their inhabitants. It was therefore probably a plain where the Pelasgi would have settled early and in numbers: and it deserves notice, that the Catalogue[164] placing the town of Graia in Bœotia, places it where we naturally assume a large, though now, as in Thessaly, subordinate Pelasgian population to have existed.