The Pelasgians

[akritas]

Who are The Pelasgians ?

Pelasgians remind us of a great racial problem belonging to the early days and of questions of more import bound up with it.

Herodotus quoted:
"Among the Greeks Croesus found upon inquiry that the Lacedaemonians were chief among them of Doric stock and the Athenians of Ionic. These races, Ionian and and Dorian, were the foremost in ancient time, the first a Pelasgian and the second an Hellenic people. The Pelasgian stock has never yet left its habitation, the Doric is assuredly a much-wandered race;"

and he traces their wanderings from Phthia, where they dwelt in King Deucalion's dayto the lands below Ossa and Olympus in King Dorus time and so onward to the Peloponnese. The Pelasgian language he cannot accurately determine but he knows of Pelasgians dwelling at Creston near the Etruscans (though once in what now is Thessaly) and of others in two places on the Hellespont"who came to dwell among the Athenians," and of other townships "once Pelasgian which changed the name;" and from these he judges that the Pelasgians had a barbarian tongue. If then--the hypothetical form must be noted--"if, then, all the Pelasgic stock so spoke, then the Attic nation, being Pelasgian, when it changed to be Hellenic, must have changed its language too," for it seems clear that the people of Creston have not changed theirs. "But the Hellenic stock, as to me seems clear, has ever used the same language since it was. While separated from the the Pelasgians it was but few in numbers, but starting by being originally small it has grown to be a multitude of nations, since the Pelasgians especially and many other foreign stocks united themselves with them. Before that, however, as I at least think, the Pelasgic stock on its side nowhere was greatly increased." (book 1, 58).


Homer mentions Pelasgians in the Catalogue and in the Odyssey, and Pelasgian is one of his epithets for Zeus of Dodona, and for that Argos where Myrmidons, Hellenes and Achaeans dwell. Hesiod calls Dodona "seat of Pelasgians." Gradually a mythical Pelasgos comes into the pedigrees to be the ancestor of Pelasgians as Hellen was of Hellenes. The tribe or people is particularly associated with Attica for some reason.

Identification with existing groups, who called themselves or were called Pelasgian, was not difficult, it was obvious. Some of this is, no doubt, tradition and some of it theory. Possibly to the son of a Dorian town, who thought not over-highly of Ionians, there was a certain satisfaction in thinking that the only real Greeks from the beginning were the Dorians.

Yet elsewhere, as we have seen, Homer links the tie of blood among Hellenes of his day with those of language, religion, and culture (VIII, 144),--a kinship between Spartans and Athenians asserted in the hour of danger. A purist might excuse the contradiction on the ground that in one place Herodotus gives his own view, in the other the Athenian opinion. But to be precise on such questions is to court disaster.


Pelasgians, in the earliest times of Greece were it would sem, clearly distinguished as Pelasgians of Thessaly and Pelasgians of Peloponnesus and to the latter the poets refer the name of Tyrrhenian Pelasgians. In my opinion the origins of such peoples are hardly to be made out from the past.

what is your opinion ?

[akritas]

here is what is Brittanica quoted as about the Pelasgians

PELASGIANS, a name applied by Greek writers to a prehistoric people whose traces were believed to exist in Greek lands. If the statements of ancient authorities are marshalled in order of their date it will be seen that certain beliefs cannot be traced back beyond the age of this or that author. Though this does not prove that the beliefs themselves were not held earlier, it suggests caution in assuming that they were. In the Homeric poems there are Pelasgians among the allies of Troy: in the catalogue, Iliad, ii. 840-843, which is otherwise in strict geographical order, they stand between the Hellespontine towns and the Thracians of south-east Europe, i.e. on the Hellespontine border of Thrace.

Their town or district is called Larissa and is fertile, and they are celebrated for their spearmanship. Their chiefs are Hippothous and Pylaeus, sons of Lethus son of Teutamus. Iliad, x. 428-429, describes their camping ground between the town of Troy and the sea; but this obviously proves nothing about their habitat in time of peace. Odyssey, xvii. 175-177, notes Pelasgians in Crete, together with two apparently indigenous and two immigrant peoples (Achaeans and Dorians), but gives no indication to which class the Pelasgians belong. In Lemnos (Iliad, vii. 467; xiv. 230) there are no Pelasgians, but a Minyan dynasty. Two other passages (Iliad, ii. 681-684; xvi. 233-235) apply the epithet "Pelasgic" to a district called Argos about Mt Othrys in south Thessaly, and to Zeus of Dodona.

But in neither case are actual Pelasgians mentioned; the Thessalian Argos is the specific home of Hellenes and Achaeans, and Dodona is inhabited by Perrhaebians and Aenianes (Iliad, ii. 750) who are nowhere described as Pelasgian. It looks therefore as if "Pelasgian" were here used connotatively, to mean either "formerly occupied by Pelasgian" or simply "of immemorial age." Hesiod expands the Homeric phrase and calls Dodona "seat of Pelasgians" (fr. 225); he speaks also of a personal Pelasgus as father of Lycaon, the culture-hero of Arcadia; and a later epic poet, Asius, describes Pelasgus as the first man, whom the earth threw up that there might be a race of men. Hecataeus makes Pelasgus king of Thessaly (expounding Iliad, ii. 681-684); Acusilaus applies this Homeric passage to the Peloponnesian Argos, and engrafts the Hesiodic Pelasgus, father of Lycaon, into a Peloponnesian genealogy. Hellanicus a generation later repeats this blunder, and identifies this Argive and Arcadian Pelasgus with the Thessalian Pelasgus of Hecataeus. For Aeschylus (Supplices 1, sqq.) Pelasgus is earthborn, as in Asius, and rules a kingdom stretching from Argos to Dodona and the Strymon; but in Prometheus 879, the "Pelasgian" land simply means Argos. Sophocles takes the same view (Inachus, fr. 2,56) and for the first time introduces the word "Tyrrhenian" into the story, apparently as synonymous with Pelasgian.

Herodotus, like Homer, has a denotative as well as a connotative use. He describes actual Pelasgians surviving and mutually intelligible (a) at Placie and Scylace on the Asiatic shore of the Hellespont, and (b) near Creston on the Strymon; in the latter area they have "Tyrrhenian" neighbours. He alludes to other districts where Pelasgian peoples lived on under changed names; Samothrace and Antandrus in Troas are probably instances of this. In Lemnos and Imbros he describes a Pelasgian population who were only conquered by Athens shortly before soo B.C., and in this connexion he tells a story of earlier raids of these Pelasgians on Attica, and of a temporary settlement there of Hellespontine Pelasgians, all dating from a time "when the Athenians were first beginning to count as Greeks." Elsewhere "Pelasgian" in Herodotus connotes anything typical of, or surviving from, the state of things in Greece before the coming of the Hellenes. In this sense all Greece was once "Pelasgic"; the clearest instances of Pelasgian survival in ritual and customs and antiquities are in Arcadia, the "Ionian" districts of north-west Peloponnese, and Attica, which have suffered least from hellenization. In Athens itself the prehistoric wall of the citadel and a plot of ground close below it were venerated in the 5th century as "Pelasgian"; so too Thucydides (ii. 17). We may note that all Herodotean examples of actual Pelasgi lie round, or near, the actual Pelasgi of Homeric Thrace; that the most distant of these is confirmed by the testimony of Thucydides (iv. 106) as to the Pelasgian and Tyrrhenian population of the adjacent seaboard: also that Thucydides adopts the same general Pelasgian theory of early Greece, with the refinement that he regards the Pelasgian name as originally specific, and as having come gradually into this generic use.

Ephorus, relying on Hesiodic tradition of an aboriginal Pelasgian type in Arcadia, elaborated a theory of the Pelasgians as a warrior-people spreading (like "Aryans") from a "Pelasgian home," and annexing and colonizing all the parts of Greece where earlier writers had found allusions to them, from Dodona to Crete and the Troad, and even as far as Italy, where again their settlements had been recognized as early as the time of Hellanicus, in close connexion once more with "Tyrrhenians." The copious additional information given by later writers is all by way either of interpretation of local legends in the light of Ephorus's theory, or of explanation of the name "Pelasgoi"; as when Philochorus expands a popular etymology "stork-folk" (w€Xaa'yoi-- it €Xap'yoi) into a theory of their seasonal migrations; or Apollodorus says that Homer calls Zeus Pelasgian "because he is not far from every one of us," 6TL Tiffs ryes 7rEXas EaTCV. The connexion with Tyrrhenians which began with Hellanicus, Herodotus and Sophocles becomes confusion with them in the 3rd century, when the Lemnian pirates and their Attic kinsmen are plainly styled Tyrrhenians, and early fortress-walls in Italy (like those on the Palatine in Rome) are quoted as "Arcadian" colonies.

Modern writers have either been content to restate or amplify the view, ascribed above to Ephorus, that "Pelasgian" simply means "prehistoric Greek," or have used the name Pelasgian at their pleasure to denote some one element in the mixed population of the Aegean - Thracian, Illyrian (Albanian) or Semitic. G. Sergi (Origine e diffusione della stirpe mcditerranea, Rome, 1895; Eng. trans. The Mediterranean Race, London, 1901), followed by many anthropologists, describes as "Pelasgian" one branch of the Mediterranean or Eur-African race of mankind, and one group of types of skull within that race. The character of the ancient citadel wall at Athens, already mentioned, has given the name "Pelasgic masonry" to all constructions of large unhewn blocks fitted roughly together without mortar, from Asia Minor to Spain.
For another view than that here taken see ACHAEANS; also GREECE: Ancient History, § 3, " Homeric Age." BIBLIOGRAPHY. - Besides sections on the subject in all principal histories of Greece and bibliographies in G. Busolt, Gr. Geschichte, i 2 (Gotha, 1893, 164-182); and K. F. Hermann (Thumser), Gr. Staatsalterthiimer, § 6, see S. Bruck, Quae veteres de Pelasgis tradiderint (Breslau, 1884); B. Giseke, Thrakisch-pelasgische Stamme auf der Balkanhalbinsel (Leipzig, 1858); F. G. Hahn, Albanesische Studien (Jena, 1854); P. Volkmuth, Die Pe`'lasger als Semiten (Schaffhausen, 1860); H. Kiepert, Monatsbericht d. berl. Akademie (1861), pp. 114 sqq.; K. Pauli, Fine vorgriechische Inschrift auf Lemnos (Leipzig, 1886); E. Meyer, "Die Pelasger" in Forschungen z. alten Geschichte (Halle, 1892), i. 124; W. Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece (Cambridge, 1901), vol. i.; J. L. Myres, "A History of the Pelasgian Theory" (in Journal of Hellenic Studies, xxvii. 170); H. Marsh, Horae pelasgicae (Cambridge, 1815); L. Benloew, La Grbce avant les Grecs (Paris, 1877). (J. L. M.)

Pelasgians - LoveToKnow 1911

[Orphic_Hymn]

Researches Into the Physical History of Mankind p. 492-496
By James Cowles Prichard


Paragraph 5.—Of the Greek language, and of the language
of the Pelasgi.

The Greek language presents in its own structure a conclusive refutation of an hypothesis which represents it as of mixed formation. It displays unequivocal marks of a genuine and primitive origin, and, as Wachsmuht observes, "the strength of pure and unmixed growth, so that the subsequent external accessions, the few foreign expressions by the side of a stock of words naturally and regularly derived from simple roots, appear insulated, and incapableof transfusing themselves into the inner essence and genius of the language."
With regard to the similarity of idiom among the single tribes, which as the result of a common origin may be traced even in the mo¬difications of its dialects, Homer's testimony, and the inference to be drawn from his emphatical mention of the harsh language of the Carians and Sintians, are deserving of particular attentiou. It may safely be denied that either the simple elements of the language, or a supply of already matured forms, could have been brought with them by foreigners, which afterwards prevailed to such an extent as to supplant an anterior language in Greece.

The Greek language was then a nearly unmixed idiom, elaborated from primitive elements, which, however, were common to it and to many other Indo-European idioms both in the east and west. The laws of inflection and developement are likewise common in many instances to the Greek, the Saskrit, Latin and Moeso-Gothic.

What then was the language of the Pelasgi ? Herodotus confesses his inability to solve this question in a satisfactory manner, but he says that if he could draw an inference from the idiom spoken in certain Pelasgian towns upon the Hellespont, it must have been barbaric, that is, not Greek. The Pelasgi inhabiting Crestona, in the inland country above the Tyrrheni, on the coast of Thrace, who, as he says, had previously dwelt in Thessaly near the Dorians, and another Pelasgian tribe, who had colonised Placia and Scylace on the Hellespont, having previously been neighbours of the Athenians, as well as the people of some other Pelasgic towns, were unintelligible to all their neighbours; yet the inhabitants or Crestona understood those of Placia. From this it seems a very reasonable inference that the Pelasgic language was different from the Greek. Yet this conclusion is so fully contradicted by all that we know of the early history of Greece, that it cannot be admitted in its full and more obvious meaning.

The tribes mentioned by Herodotus were the last relics of the Pelasgian name: and the Pelasgians who at this late period spoke a peculiar idiom, must have acquired this difference or peculiarity of their speech in the course of a long separation from the great body of the people descended from the Pelasgi of the Peloponnesus and of Attica, Perhaps they only differed as the descendant of Angles and Danes in England now differ from their brethren in Holstein and Denmark.
The old Pelasgic language was doubtless the idiom that originally prevailed in the Peloponnesus among the primitive Arcadians, and the people of Argos, and the Achaeans of the northern coast, who, as Herodotus declares, were termed "Πελασγοι Αιγιαλεες", or Sea-coast Pelasgi. This language was the AEolic Greek.

I shall compare with these remarks Strabo's account of the, dialects of the Peloponnesus and the rest of Greece.
After marking the extension of the AEolic nation and of their language in other parts of Greece, that geographer adds the following remarks:

" Those people who dwelt within the isthmus," that is, in Peloponnesus, " were formerly AEolians, but they afterwards became mixed; for some Ionians from Attica got possession of AEgialus' that is, the country afterwards called Achaia, and the descendants of Hercules brought with them the Dorians, by whom Megara and many of the cities in the Peloponnesus were founded. The Ionians, however, were soon driven out again by the Achaians, who were an AEolic nation, and the two other races then remained in the Peloponnesus namely, the AEolians and the Dorians. Those who had least intercourse with the Dorians continued to speak the AEolic dialect; this was the case with the Arcadians and Eleans; the former were a people of the mountains, and their country did not fall under the lot; and the latter were deemed sacred to Olympic Jupiter, and had lived a long time in peace; they were besides of AEolic descent, and had given entertainment to the army of Oxylus at the return of the Heraclida:. 'Hie rest speak a sort of mixed language between the two dialects, some having more of the AEolic and some less, and even now particular cities differ from each other in speech ; but they are all considered to follow the Dorian fashion, on account of the predominant power of that people." It therefore seems to be unquestionable, since the fact that Arcadia never changed its inhabitants, that the Pelasgic speech was the AEolic dialect of the Greek language. The AEolic is generally considered to be the oldest form of the Greek language, and the common original from which the other dialects deviate.

I. The Attic has several forms which are common to it and the AEolic, and which disappear in the late Attic writers, and are considered as archaisms.

2. The Ionic and Attic are modifications of one principal dialect. " We deem," says Strabo, " the Ionic dialect to be the same with the ancient Attic ; for the Attic people of those times were termed Iones, and from them originated the Iones who settled colonies in Asia, and who speak the language now termed Ionic."

3. With respect to the remaining Greek dialect, the Doric, Strabo affirms it to have been originally AEolic. He says that the Dorians inhabited a secluded tract of Mount Parnassus, and being a small tribe, and cut off from the rest of the Greeks, gradually deviated somewhat in customs and in dialect from their ancestors, who were nevertheless originally AEoles and spoke the AEolic language. Pindar confirms this remark; he calls his muse Doric and AEolic in the same ode:

......ἀλλὰ Δωρίαν ἀπὸ φόρμιγγα πασσάλου
λάμβαν᾽.......


and again:

.......ἐμὲ δὲ στεφανῶσαι
κεῖνον ἱππίῳ νόμῳ
Αἰοληΐδι μολπᾷ
χρή:.............


The Ionian branch of the Greek nation retained the name of Pelasgi longer than the AEolians and Dorians. Hence we find the Ionians termed in distinction Pelasgi by many writers; this is not only to be observed of the Ionians who colonised the coast of Achiea, and were termed Pelasgi of AEgialus, but also of their brethren of Attica. That the Peloponnesians, however, were originally AEolians or Pelasgians, we have seen abundantly proved.
It seems certain from these considerations that the Pelasgic language was AEolic Greek.

It appears from Strabo's account, that of the four Grecian tribes the AEolians were by far the most widely spread, since they occupied originally the greater part of the Peloponnesus, and all the remainder of Greece, with the exception of Attica, where the Attic dialect prevailed, and Megara and Doris, to the northward of the Corinthian gulf, where the Doric dialect was spoken. The Ionic race, originally a branch of the AEolians, was confined to the northern parts of the Peloponnesus and Attica. The Dorians, who were the first people termed Hellenes, and by whose military power and influence that name came to be extended to the rest of the Greek nation, introduced their language into the peninsula in that celebrated invasion which changed the face of Greece.


Recapitulation.

The Pelasgi appear to have been the earliest known inhabitants of several parts of Greece, particularly of the inland parts, for it was in later times that they became, or rather that some tribes of them became a seafaring people and dwelt upon the islands and coasts. In Peloponnesus they possessed Argolis and Arcadia, as likewise the northern coast, afterwards called Achaia, when they were designated Pelasgi Littorales, or Πελασγοι Αιγιαλεες. That all the inhabitants of the Peloponnesus were Pelasgi we cannot affirm, but as the language of the Pelasgi was AEolic Greek, and as this was the general idiom of the peninsula, it is probable that the whole of that country was peopled by nations allied to the Pelasgi by consanguinity. The Pelasgi possessed also Attica and Thessaly. Boeotia, Locris, and AEtolia seem to have been inhabited by Leleges and other races reported to have been distinct from the Pelasgi. Some of these were wandering maritime tribes who spread themselves over the coasts of Greece and Asia Minor.

When the people of Attica and different parts of the Peloponnesus and Boeotia, either by the accession of new colonies or by the gradual progress of social improvement, and by intercourse with more cultivated nations, had become civilised and dwelt in cities, and formed different states which assumed new names, their connexion with the old Pelasgi became loosened and gradually forgotten. The Arcadians were the only people in the southern parts of Greece who remained unchanged. In Thessaly the aboriginal Pelasgi were overcome and expelled by more warlike and enterprising tribes, and they sought refuge, as we have seen, in the countries lying both towards the east and west.
After these revolutions and during some ages, the Grecian people had no collective name ; they were termed Argives, Achaeans, Danaidae, indifferently.
It was in a simitar manner, and owing to the superior military influence of the Hellenes, that the name of that tribe became subsequently predominant. The account of this change given by Thucydides is well known.
The Tyreenian or Tyrrhenian Pelasgi were particular wandering bands of the Pelasgic race, who came in time to differ in language from their stationary brethren, so that they were in the days of Herodotus unintelligible to the Greeks.

On the whole, we may conclude that the Pelasgi were the original stock from which the different stems of the Greek population ramified. That the other contributory races were originally akin to the Pelasgi, we may infer from the unity of language in all parts of Greece. The Pelasgi spoke the old dialect, the mother tongue, if we may so term it, the idiom which gave birth to all the other Grecian dialects.

[olvios]

Herodotus, The Histories (ed. A. D. Godley)

LVI. When he heard these verses, Croesus was pleased with them above all, for he thought that a mule would never be king of the Medes instead of a man, and therefore that he and his posterity would never lose his empire. Then he sought very carefully to discover who the mightiest of the Greeks were, whom he should make his friends. [2] He found by inquiry that the chief peoples were the Lacedaemonians among those of Doric, and the Athenians among those of Ionic stock. These races, Ionian and Dorian, were the foremost in ancient time, the first a Pelasgian and the second a Hellenic people. The Pelasgian race has never yet left its home; the Hellenic has wandered often and far. [3] For in the days of king Deucalion1 it inhabited the land of Phthia, then the country called Histiaean, under Ossa and Olympus, in the time of Dorus son of Hellen; driven from this Histiaean country by the Cadmeans, it settled about Pindus in the territory called Macedonian; from there again it migrated to Dryopia, and at last came from Dryopia into the Peloponnese, where it took the name of Dorian.2

The wanderers among the greek tribes were the Dorians who supposedly invade though in greek tradition they return as heracleids to greece.The ones who had not left like in example the Ionians were called pelasgians and athenians bragged about their autocthony.Dorians gave the new name to the culturaly and consciously though not politicaly united pelasgic nation the hellenes. The dorians being greeks thus pelasgian wandered and finally returned but with a new name the Hellenes.Among all those people of the same nation the most renowned gave this nation their new name - Hellenes.

The text above illustrates that the finest of all Greeks were the all the hellenes(dorians) & Ionians(pelasgians).Later the Doric hellene tribe gained more glory and renown and from her all the nation was called "Hellenes".

[olvios]

[akritas]

Olvios
Herodotus claim or better conclude also that Pelasgians were "barbarians"

the Pelasgians spoke a language which was not Greek (I-57)

So in my opinion Herodotus was not sure either for the origin of the Pelsgians and definetly were not Greek speakers.

[olvios]

He relates this in comparison with the form that language has taken at his time.His comment being lingual does not stop him from considering them greek stock thus hellenes.Not his type of modern(ancient or mythic)Greek speakers but Greeks nonetheless.He states that lacedaemonians,athenians,ionians,doric,hellenic,pe lasgian are all greeks inspite their differences.Also note that his same blood,language,religion definition on ethnos is his modern(ancient) definition of it.He does not doubt that the above were and are greeks just that from his time and beyond the perception of ethnos would be thus.He makes a liguistic charakterization not an ethnic one as he illustrates they were with no doubt greeks.

[akritas]

btw perseus library is WRONG

He found by inquiry that the chief peoples were the Lacedaemonians among those of Doric, and the Athenians among those of Ionic stock.
These races, Ionian and Dorian, were the foremost in ancient time, the first (Athenians) a Pelasgian and the second (Lacedamonians) a Hellenic people.

Translation from Kaktus

Οι έρευνες του έδειξαν ότι οι Λακεδαιμόνιοι ήταν δυνατότεροι από τους Δωριείς και οι Αθηναίοι από τους Ίωνες.
Αυτοί οι δύο, από τους οποίους οι πρώτοι (Λακεδαιμόνιοι, και όχι Δωριείς) καταγόταν από το Πελασγούς ενώ οι άλλοι (Αθηναίοι, και όχι Ίωνες) από τους Έλληνες ήταν οι επικρατέστεροι.

[Ptolemy]

Originally Posted by akritas

btw perseus library is WRONG

Quote:
He found by inquiry that the chief peoples were the Lacedaemonians among those of Doric, and the Athenians among those of Ionic stock.
These races, Ionian and Dorian, were the foremost in ancient time, the first (Athenians) a Pelasgian and the second (Lacedamonians) a Hellenic people.

Translation from Kaktus


Quote:
Οι έρευνες του έδειξαν ότι οι Λακεδαιμόνιοι ήταν δυνατότεροι από τους Δωριείς και οι Αθηναίοι από τους Ίωνες.
Αυτοί οι δύο, από τους οποίους οι πρώτοι (Λακεδαιμόνιοι, και όχι Δωριείς) καταγόταν από το Πελασγούς ενώ οι άλλοι (Αθηναίοι, και όχι Ίωνες) από τους Έλληνες ήταν οι επικρατέστεροι.


Translation from Kaktus

To perseus exei sta ellinika to parakato.

historeôn de heuriske Lakedaimonious kai Athênaious proechontas tous men tou Dôrikou geneos tous de tou Iônikou. tauta gar ên ta prokekrimena, eonta to archaion to men Pelasgikon to de Hellênikon ethnos

to proexo shmainei "krato", "proigoumai" alla kai "eimai anoteros". To "htan dunatoteroi apo tous Dorieis" tous diaforopoiei apo tous Dorieis. Mipos grafei "htan oi dunatoteroi..."?

[Ptolemy]

Diabase ksana ti leei o kaktos.

"Οι έρευνες του έδειξαν ότι οι Λακεδαιμόνιοι ήταν δυνατότεροι από τους Δωριείς"

Otan isxurizomai px

- eimai dunatoteros apo tous Ellines (diaforopoio ton eauto mou apo autous)

- eimai O dunatoteros apo tous Ellines (eimai enas apo autous)

Etsi kai sto pio pano pou postare o akritas gia na bgazei sosto nohma eprepe na einai h metafrasi tou kaktou "Oi Lakedaimonioi itan oi dunatoteroi apo tous Dorieis"