to establish the relation of the Pelasgi to the old forms of the
language of both countries. It is enough for the present to refer to
the Second Chapter of Bishop Marsh’s Horæ Pelasgicæ for a very able
and satisfactory discussion of the question. I shall presently have to
consider the particular complexion of the words which the Greek nation
appear to have derived from Pelasgic sources, and the inferences which
that complexion suggests. But this will best be done, when we have
examined into the Homeric import of the Hellenic and Pelasgian proper
names.
_Pelasgian route into Greece._
We have next to examine the question,
By what route is it most probable that this Pelasgian nation came into
Greece?
On this subject there can hardly be any other than one of two
suppositions: the first, that by Thrace, or by the islands of the
north, they reached Thessaly: the other, that they crossed from Asia,
to the south of the Ægean, by the islands which divide the spaces of
that sea.
It is observed by Cramer[390], that the prevailing opinion among those
ancient writers, who have discussed the subject, places the Pelasgians
first in the Peloponnesus: this being maintained by Pherecydes,
Ephorus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Pausanias, without any
dissentients to oppose them. This tradition evidently favours the
opinion of a passage by the south.
Dionysius, who may be regarded as summing up the general results of
Greek tradition, says[391] it placed the Pelasgians first in the
Peloponnesus as autochthons; and represented them as having migrated
to Thessaly in the sixth generation. In six generations more, they
were, he conceives, expelled by the Ætolians and Locrians, then
called Curetes and Leleges, and were dispersed into various quarters:
indeed, here the tradition seems to become wholly vague or mythical,
and to have gathered into one mass most of the places in which there
appeared signs of Pelasgic occupancy: it includes the report of a great
migration to Italy.
Marsh[392] considers Thrace as the original seat in Europe of the
Pelasgi; but the _data_ on which he proceeds are too narrow; they
have reference only to the islands of Lemnus, Imbrus, and Samothrace.
There is no evidence of Pelasgians on the Continent to the north of
the Ægean except what places them at a distance from Troy (τῆλε Hom.
Il. xvii. 301), and if so, at a point which they may have reached from
those islands, more probably, than by the continental route. It is on
the whole more likely, however, that Pelasgians may have found their
way into Greece both by the north (and if so, probably through the
islands), and also by the south.
Homer affords no materials for conclusively determining the question.
He gives us the Pelasgic name established in Thessaly, which favours
our supposing the one passage, and likewise in Crete, which favours
the other. He gives us the Pelasgic Jove of Dodona (a very weighty
piece of testimony), and the τέμενος of Ceres in Thessaly, telling
rather for the first; and he likewise gives us a perceptible connection
between Ceres and Crete, and between Jupiter and king Minos, verging
to the latter. But it is to be observed that, with the exception of
Attica, the chief Homeric tokens of Pelasgianism lie in Northern and in
Southern, but not in Middle, Greece: which favours the opinion, that
there may have been a double line of entry.
The extra-Homeric tradition is on the whole most favourable to the
supposition of a southern route. Hesiod makes Dodona in Thessaly
Pelasgian, but distinctly associates Ceres with Crete: and the Theogony
(479, 80) sends Jupiter as an infant to be reared in Crete. The Hymn
to Ceres, as we have seen, brings her from thence to Eleusis; and
the popular mythology in general treats that island as the cradle
of Jupiter, therefore manifestly as the place from which the Greeks
derived his worship. More than this; the tradition makes Peloponnesus
the seat and centre of Pelasgic power, as we see from Æschylus, who
makes Pelasgus reside in Peloponnesus, but rule as far as Macedonia.
So likewise the names both of Ἀπίη γαῖα and of Ἰασὸν Ἄργος connect
themselves originally with this part of Greece: especially when we
consider that Apis in Egypt is the sacred bull, and that agriculture,
the characteristic pursuit of the Pelasgians, was also the business of
oxen. Again, Herodotus[393] reports that the local tradition of Dodona
assigned to that oracle an Egyptian origin; and as Dodona was Pelasgic,
this tradition somewhat favours the hypothesis of entry by the south.
There are several allusions in Homer to Crete, to Cyprus, or to both,
as marking the route between Greece and Asia. Menelaus, after quitting
Troy, and nearing Crete (Od. iii. 285-92), sailed afar
Κύπρον Φοινίκην τε καὶ Αἰγυπτίους ἐπαληθεῖς[394].
The pseudo-Ulysses sails from Crete to Egypt[395], and returns
thence to Phœnicia, in one tale, and afterwards starts for Libya by
Crete; in another legend, he is given over from Egypt to Cyprus; and
Antinous[396], in the Seventeenth Odyssey, replying to the supposed
beggar-man, says, Get out of the way,
μὴ τάχα πικρὴν Αἴγυπτον καὶ Κύπρον ἵκηαι.
We already know the connection of Crete with Greece from the Iliad: and
thus it appears as on the high road from Greece to Phœnicia, and by
Phœnicia to Egypt. The unexampled populousness of that island would,
as a matter of course, beget migration; and, of all the tracts lying
to the west of the Ægean, the Thessalian plain would, from its extent,
offer perhaps the greatest encouragement to agricultural settlers.
The traditions reported by Herodotus from Dodona connect that place
closely with Egypt and the East, and the route now supposed by Crete
establishes that connection in what is probably the simplest and most
obvious line.
The continental country from Thessaly to the north and east was held
as it would appear to a great extent by a martial and highland race
Θρῇκες and Θρηίκιοι. It is not likely that the Pelasgians had much
in common with that people, or could make their way to Greece either
with or in despite of them. Perhaps the coast where we find Cicones
and Pæones apart from the Thracians, may have afforded a route, and we
must remember the traditional traces of them both on the coast of the
Hellespont and in the islands[397].
This may be the place most convenient for observing, that there can
be little hesitation in regarding the northern route as that by which
the Hellic tribes came into Greece. They, a highland people, came
along a mountain country. They left their name upon the Hellespont,
the sea of Helle, which means not the mere strait so called in later
times, but the whole northern Ægean[398]; and upon the river Selleeis,
which discharges itself into the sea of Marmora. We first hear of them
in Homer at the extreme north of Thessaly: then we find them giving
their name, Hellas, to that country, or to some part of it. The people
of Hellas, when their connection with their sires of the mountain had
become faint in comparison with their relation to the territory they
occupied, called themselves Hellenes, from the region they inhabited;
and lost sight, as it were, of the ruder parent tribe. In the meantime,
they had struck out offshoots through Greece, and the name Hellas had,
as will be seen[399], probably come, even in the time of Homer, to be
applied in a secondary and comprehensive sense to the whole northern
and central parts of it.
_Peloponnesus the seat of power._
It is remarkable and undeniable, with reference both to Pelasgic and
to Hellenic times, that in whatever part of the country ruling tribes
or families might first make their appearance, the permanent seat of
power for Greece was uniformly in the Peloponnesus. Every movement
of political importance appears to direct itself thither, and there
to rest in equilibrium. The old tradition of Pelasgus, the dynasties
of Danaids, Perseids, and Pelopids, the great Heraclid and Doric
invasion, evidently aiming at laying hold on the centre of dominion,
and yet more, that Spartan primacy (ἡγεμονία), which endured for so
many centuries, all tell the same tale; finally the train of evidence
is crowned by the strong local sympathies of Juno. It was only in
the fifth century before the Christian era that Athens acquired the
lead: nor did she keep it long. Her sway, after an interval, was
followed by another shortlived ascendancy, that of Thebes, in the
fourth century. But Greece ended as she had begun: and the last
splendours of her national sentiment and military courage were flung
from its pristine seats in Peloponnesus: from Lacedæmon, and Achaia.
The old Amphictyonic Union alone remained, throughout the historic
times of Greece, to bear witness to the fact that it was in the north
of the Isthmus, and above all in Thessaly, that the Hellic tribes
first organised themselves as distinct political integers, united
in substance, if not in form, in respect of their common religious
worship, and their common blood.
It was probably greater security, which gave this advantage, in
early times, to Southern over Northern and Midland Greece. Only one
narrow neck of land led into the Peloponnesus, and that passage was
so circuitous, or dangerous, or both, that it was not the highway of
immigrant tribes, who seem usually to have crossed the Corinthian gulf
into Elis. This tract of land had not indeed the whole, but it had
much, of the advantage enjoyed by England. It was not quite, but it was
almost,
A precious stone, set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house[400].
When reached, it was the highway to nothing. The fat lands of Bœotia
were a road onwards for all who came from Thessaly: there was here a
choice between barrenness and poverty, on the one hand, like those of
Attica in early times, and insecurity of tenure in the rich soils,
which were the object of desire to each tribe as it went upon its
march. The Peloponnesus was richer than the one, far more secure than
the other: it throve accordingly; and in the Trojan war this small
territory supplied four hundred and thirty ships, probably including
the greatest number of large vessels, while the other two divisions of
continental Greece together gave no more than five hundred and thirty.
And it seems to have had altogether a more vigorous and concentrated
political organisation; for while the five hundred and thirty were in
fifteen divisions, under twenty-six leaders, the Peloponnesian force
was in six divisions, under nine leaders only, and of the six three at
least, namely, those of Mycenæ, Lacedæmon, and Arcadia, were virtually
under the direct command of Agamemnon.
_Derivation of the Pelasgian name._
Various derivations have been suggested for the name of the Pelasgi.
Some will have it to come from Peleg, mentioned in the tenth chapter
of Genesis, whose name, said to mean division, is taken to allude to
the partition of the earth’s surface among the various tribes of the
human race. Marsh well observes, that this amounts to no more than
possibility: that the meaning of the word will not serve to attach
it to the Pelasgi in particular, as in the early ages of the world
migration, with partition and repartition, was a continuous process:
and that, even if true, it tells us nothing of them antecedent to their
European settlement[401]: nothing, that is to say, of a material kind,
except what we know independently of it, viz. their being, in common
with all other races, of eastern origin. Clinton gives other reasons
for rejecting this etymology[402], while he sees force in the reference
of the names of Iapetus and Ion to Japheth and Javan respectively.
It seems plain that we could not safely build upon even a complete
similarity of name, in a case where the interval of time that separates
Peleg and Pelasgi, the terms we are to compare, is so vast and so
obscure.
So also the name πελαργοὶ, meaning storks, has been taken to be the
foundation of Πελασγοί; and the explanation has been given, that the
stork is a migratory bird, and that the Pelasgi were called after it
on account of their wanderings.
This explanation, which seems worse than the former, rests in part
upon a statement of Herodotus misconstrued. He calls the Dorians ἔθνος
πουλυπλάνητον κάρτα[403], and this has been erroneously applied to the
Pelasgians, of whom, on the contrary, he says, οὐδαμῆ κω ἐξεχώρησε.
This statement from a writer of the age of Herodotus, fully neutralises
the statement of Dionysius, who describes them as itinerant, and never
securely settled[404]. He may, indeed, mean no more than Thucydides
means, when he says (i. 2), that the occupants of good soils were
the most liable to dispossession. But does this idea of itinerancy
correspond with the migrations of the stork, which seem to have
reference to the steady periodical variations of climate, and to be as
far as possible from the idea implied in ‘much-roving?’
It appears to have been the understood characteristic of that bird,
to draw to and dwell about the settled habitations of men. It seems
highly improbable, and without precedent, that a widely spread nation
should take its name from a bird: but may not the bird have taken its
name from the nation? If it were a nation emphatically of settlers,
as opposed to pirates, robbers, nomads, and rovers of all kinds,
dwelling with comfort in fixed abodes, as opposed to the ἀνιπτόποδες
χαμαίευναι[405], might not birds, which seemed to share these
settlements, be reasonably named after the people?
It by no means appears as if Aristophanes, in the passage where
he uses the term, intended a mere pun. It is in the comedy of the
Birds[406], and is an allusion to that law of the Athenians, evidently
here signified under the name of storks, which required children to
provide for their parents[407]. The passage is clearly a testimony to
the Pelasgic origin of the Athenians: and it may be based upon the
belief, that the storks took their name from the Pelasgi, and that
the similarity lay in their habit of settling on the roofs of houses
and the like, almost as if inhabitants, in the villages of which the
Pelasgi were the first Greek founders. It also gives room for the
conjecture that Πελαργοὶ may have been the old form of the name.
The stork, it may be remembered, was one of the sacred birds of the
Egyptians.
Again, the word πέλαγος has been suggested as supplying the true
derivation of the Pelasgian name. Marsh[408] rejects it, because he
conceives it is founded upon the hypothesis that the Pelasgi came
across the Ægean, which he thinks improbable. But the evidence appears
to be in favour of their having come principally by the islands, if
not at once across the Ægean. It may also be questioned, whether the
etymology must rest on this hypothesis exclusively. For, in the first
place, the more natural construction would be, not that they came by
sea, but that they came _from beyond sea_, an idea which might very
well attach to any people of Asiatic origin. So it was that the too
famous Pelagius, who is known to have been a Welshman, came by his
classical name; a name bearing that very signification[409]. But
is it not also possible, that πέλαγος may at one time have had the
meaning of a plain? It properly signifies a wide open level surface,
corresponding with the Latin _æquor_, and with our _main_. Hence Homer
never attaches to the word πέλαγος any of his usual epithets for
the sea, such as οἴνοψ, ἠχηεὶς, μεγακήτης, ἀτρύγετος, πολύφλοισβος;
but only μέγα, great: and he uses the phrase ἅλος ἐν πελάγεσσι[410],
which would be mere tautology, if πέλαγος properly and directly meant
the sea. So Pindar has πόντιον πέλαγος, Æschylus ἃλς πελαγία, and
Apollonius Rhodius πέλαγος θαλάσσης[411]. There were in Macedonia, as
we learn from Strabo, a people called Pelagones[412], and in Homer
we find the names Πελάγων and Πηλέγων. Again, we have in Hesychius,
among the meanings of πελαγίζειν, ψεύδεσθαι μεγάλα, and for πέλαγος he
gives μέγεθος, πλῆθος, βύθος; as well as πλάτος θαλάσσης. It seems not
impossible that the Pelasgi may owe their name to the word πέλαγος, in
its primary sense of plain and open surface: as the word Θρῇξ, in this
view its exact counterpart, was derived from τρῆχυς, and at one time
meant simply the inhabitant of a rough and rocky place, a mountaineer
or highlander.
There is, however, another mode in which Πελασγοὶ may bear the sense of
inhabitants of the plain, or rather (for it is in this that the word
will most comprehensively apply to them, and most closely keep to its
proper meaning), of the cultivable country, which would include valleys
as well as plains properly so called: and indeed this derivation,
suggested by K. O. Müller, is the simplest possible, if only we can
clear the first step, which _assumes_ the identity of Πελασγοὶ and
Πελαργοί. He says it is compounded of πέλω and ἄργος. The first meaning
of πέλω seems to imply motion with repetition or custom. Afterwards it
is _to be_, and especially _to be wont to be_. Thus it will, while yet
very near its fountain, have the sense, _to frequent_ or _inhabit_.
To the same origin he refers πόλις, πολέω; and also the πελώρια, the
harvest feast of Thessaly, taken as the feast of inhabitation[413] or
settlement.
The subject of this name will again come into view, when the later
name of Ἀργεῖοι is examined. In the mean time, let it be observed,
that if the Pelasgi were thus called from being, or if only they in
fact were, inhabitants of the plains, we find in this some further
explanation of the tradition, which can hardly have been an unmixed
error, of their vagrant character. For the plains contained the most
fertile soils: and, especially as they were of limited extent, their
inhabitants could not but rapidly increase, so as to require more space
for the support of their population. Further, these rich tracts offered
a prize to all the tribes who were in want of settlements; according
to the just observation of Thucydides[414], already quoted, that the
most fertile parts of Greece, namely, Bœotia, Thessaly, and much of
Peloponnesus, most frequently changed hands. This would be more and
more applicable to a given people, in proportion as it might be more
addicted to peaceful pursuits. Manifestly, it is as inhabitants of the
plains, or the cultivable country, that Homer especially marks the
Pelasgi: both by calling the great plain of Thessaly Pelasgic, and by
the epithet ἐριβώλαξ which he applies (Il. ii. 841, and xvii. 301), to
their Larissa, on the only two occasions when he mentions it. And the
etymological inquiry seems, upon the whole, to direct us, although the
particular path be somewhat uncertain, towards a similar conclusion.
FOOTNOTES:
[276] Il. xiv. 321.
[277] Od. xix. 178.
[278] Od. xi. 568-71.
[279] Cf. Il. i. 238. ii. 205.
[280] Il. xviii. 501. xxiii. 436.
[281] Æn. vi. 566.
[282] Il. iii. 365.
[283] Nägelsbach, Homerische Theologie, p. 83; and Vid. inf. sect. iv.
pp. 120, 124.
[284] Höck’s Creta, ii. 142, n.
[285] Il. xiii. 450. Od. xix. 179.
[286] Od. xix. 181-98.
[287] Höck’s Creta, ii. 182.
[288] Od. xvii. 523.
[289] Od. xiv. 199. Il. xiii. 453. Il. ii. 649.
[290] Od. xix. 172.
[291] Il. xi. 712.
[292] Il. vii. 133, 5.
[293] Od. xvii. 442.
[294] Od. xi. 321.
[295] Il. i. 260-5.
[296] Od. xi. 631.
[297] Ibid. 322-5.
[298] Il. xiii. 450-3.
[299] Fragm. xi. Strabo vii. p. 332.
[300] Il. xiii. 681.
[301] Il. xiv. 322.
[302] Od. iv. 564.
[303] Od. vii. 317-26.
[304] Od. xi. 580.
[305] Æsch. Suppl. 262.
[306] Thucyd. i. 4.
[307] Minos, 16, 17.
[308] Pol. ii. 10. 4.
[309] For a lucid sketch of the position of Minos as defined by
tradition, see Thirlwall’s Greece, vol. i. ch. 5.
[310] Herod. iii. 122.
[311] Herod. i. 173.
[312] Müller’s Dorians, ii. 11. 8; Eurip. Fragm. i.
[313] Creta ii. 87.
[314] Pol. ii. 10.
[315] Ibid. ii. 10. 2.
[316] Minos 11-17.
[317] Athen. vi. p. 263.
[318] Ibid. p. 267.
[319] Il. xviii. 592.
[320] Paus. x. 17. 4.
[321] Ath. vi. p. 263.
[322] Höck’s Creta, b. ii. sect. 4. (ii. 222 and seqq.)
[323] Il. xii. 397.
[324] See particularly his speech Il. xii. 310-28.
[325] There were also Lycians of Troas, with whom Pandarus was
connected: and it is possible that these may be the persons meant.
(Schol. on Il. v. 105.)
[326] For the question whether the Leleges on one single occasion form
an exception, see sup. p. 162.
[327] Il. xvii. 350, 1. ii. 848.
[328] Il. xii. 408. xvi. 421.
[329] Od. vi. 241.
[330] Il. xii. 397.
[331] Il. xvi. 659.
[332] Il. xvi. 422. xvii. 426.
[333] Il. xii. 310.
[334] Vid. inf. sect. vii.
[335] Il. v. 172.
[336] Il. ii. 827.
[337] Il. v. 105.
[338] Paus. viii. 2. 1.
[339] Grote, Hist. Greece, iv. 280.
[340] Vid. inf. sect. x.
[341] Herod. i. 136.
[342] Photii Bibliotheca 72. p. 107.
[343] Herod. i. 73.
[344] Il. xxiii. 860.
[345] Il. vi. 193.
[346] Od. xvii. 442, 8.
[347] Ibid. 440-4.
[348] Vid. sup. p. 125.
[349] Il. xi. 19-28.
[350] Il. ii. 108.
[351] Od. viii. 362.
[352] See inf. Religion and Morals, Sect. iii.
[353] Gr. κινύρα, Hebr. kinnûr. Liddell and Scott, in voc.
[354] Apollod. Bibl. iii. 14. 3. Pind. Pyth. ii. 26. Ov. Met. x. 310.
[355] Cambridge, 1815.
[356] Sup. p. 108.
[357] Hist. Fragm. x. 2.
[358] Paus. viii. 1. 2.
[359] Rhet.
[360] Hist. vi. 56, 8.
[361] Minos 10.
[362] Æsch. Suppl. 256.
[363] Paus. viii. 2. 2.
[364] Herod. ii. 56.
[365] ii. 171.
[366] i. 146.
[367] vii. 94.
[368] i. 56.
[369] viii. 44.
[370] ii. 52.
[371] v. 64.
[372] Thuc. i. 3.
[373] Thuc. v. 109.
[374] Theocr. Idyll. xv. 136-40.
[375] Pind. Pyth. xi. 18. Soph. Aj. 285.
[376] See inf. sect. viii.
[377] Argonaut. i. 580, and Schol. Paris.
[378] Strabo vii. p. 327.
[379] Ibid. v. p. 221.
[380] Ibid.
[381] i. 17.
[382] See however p. 114 above.
[383] So the ὀχετηγὸς ἀνὴρ already exists, as apart from the common
labourer, in the time of Homer; Il. xxi. 257.
[384] K. O. Müller, Orchomenos, 119-22.
[385] Chap. iii.
[386] Cramer’s Geogr. Ancient Greece, vol. i. p. 15.
[387] The tradition that the Pelasgians were the original inhabitants
of the Greek Peninsula appears to have been adopted into the literature
of modern Greece. See Πετρίδης--Ἱστορία τῆς παλαίας Ἑλλάδος ἀπὸ τοὺς
ἀρχαιοτάτους χρόνους, Κερκύρα, 1830, chap. i. p. 2. Also that Pelasgi
and Hellenes were the two factors (μέρη) of the Greek nation. Ibid. p.
3.
[388] Niebuhr, ibid.
[389] Horæ Pelasg. ch. ii. p. 28.
[390] Cramer’s Greece i. 17.
[391] Antiq. Rom. i. 17, 18.
[392] Horæ Pelasg. pp. 12-15.
[393] Herod. ii. 54-7.
[394] Od. iv. 83.
[395] Ibid. xiv. 246-58, 290, 293-300.
[396] Ibid. v. 442, 7, 8.
[397] Perhaps the use of the word ἤπειρος for mainland may suggest,
that it is due to an insular people, who would appropriately describe
a continent as the unlimited (land). It is derived from α and πέρας,
an end or stop; consider also περάω, to pass over, ἀντιπέραια, Il. ii.
635, and πέρην ἱερῆς Εὐβοίης, ibid. 535.
[398] See inf. sect. vi.
[399] Inf. sect. vi.
[400] Richard II., act ii., sc. 1.
[401] Horæ Pelasg. ch. i. sub fin.
[402] Clinton, Fast. Hell. i. p. 97.
[403] Herod. i. 56.
[404] Dion. Hal. i. 17.
[405] Il. xvi. 235.
[406] Ὄρνιθες, v. 1359.
[407] Potter’s Antiq., b. i. ch. 26.
[408] Horæ Pelasg. ch. i. p. 17.
[409] See Hey’s Norrisian Lectures, vol. iii. p. 142.
[410] Od. v. 335.
[411] Ol. vii. 104; Persæ 427; Scott and Liddell in πέλαγος. I venture
to suggest πελάζω as the root, and ‘accessible,’ ‘easily travelled,’
‘open’ (compare εὐρυαγυῖα) as the meaning.
[412] Strabo, p. 327, 331.
[413] Orchomenos, p. 119 and n.
[414] Thuc. i. 2.
SECT. IV.
_On the Phœnicians, and the Outer Geography of the Odyssey._
_The Phœnicians._
The text of Homer appears to afford presumptions, if not of close
affinity between the Phœnician and Hellenic races, yet of close
congeniality, and of great capacity for amalgamation; although the
former were of Semitic origin.
The Phœnician name, as may be seen from Strabo, was widely spread
through Greece: even in Homer we find the word Φοίνιξ already used, (1)
for a Phœnician, (2) for a Greek proper name, (3) for purple, and (4)
for the palm tree (Od. v. 163).