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._