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 • Crestona, as every reader of ancient history well knows, has been conjectured to have been a place not in Thrace or in the neighbourhood of Mount Athos, but to be erroneously written instead of Croton in Umbria, which the Pelasgi are said to have conquered; and Herodotus is supposed to say that the Pelasgi of Placia, on the Hellespont, spoke the same language as the Pelasgi in the interior of Northern Italy. This notion was first suggested by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who probably quoted Herodotus from very imperfect recollection. It was adopted by Count Caylus, the author of a very elaborate but fanciful work on Etruscan Antiquities. Larcher thought it scarcely worthy of refutation, but the learned Niebuhr embraced and defended the hypothesis. The question, if I may venture to express an opinion, has been finally settled by K. Otfried Müller, who observed that there were two places in Thrace, of which the names are essentially the same, though different in form from that of the Herodotean Crotona, and that the Crestonian land (rò Konoτwvikòv), according to Thucydides, reached into the peninsula of Athos. This, it can hardly be doubted, was the place meant by Herodotus: since it lay precisely, as he says, beyond the Tyrrheni, namely, beyond or above the district where in fact Thucydides places the Tyrrhenian Pelasgi. It is extremely improbable that Herodotus made an allusion here to a distant place in Northern Italy, with the language of which, as even of its existence, it is unlikely that he had the most remote acquaintance, especially as he appears to have made no reference whatever to Italy, but was employed in discussing the relations of eastern tribes, and of the people on the Hellespont. separation from the great body of the people descended from the Pelasgi of the Peloponnesus and of Attica. Perhaps they only differed as the descendants 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 Achæans of the northern coast, who, as Herodotus declares, were termed Пleλaoyoì Aiyiaλées, or Sea-coast Pelasgi. This language was the Eolic 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 Eolic 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 Eolians, but they afterwards became mixed; for some Ionians from Attica got possession of Ægialus," 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 Æolic nation, and the two other races then remained in the Peloponnesus, namely, the Æolians and the Dorians. Those who had least intercourse with the Dorians continued to speak the Æolic 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 Æolic descent, and had given entertainment to the army of Oxylus at the return of the Heraclidæ. The rest speak a sort of mixed language between the two dialects, some having more of the Æolic 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 Eolic dialect of the Greek language. The Æolic is generally considered to be the oldest form of the Greek language, and the common original from which the other dialects deviate. 1. The Attic has several forms which are common to it and the Æolic, 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 Æolic. 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 Æoles and spoke the Æolic language. Pindar confirms this remark; he calls his muse Doric and Æolic in the same ode:* and again: ......ἀλλὰ Δωρίαν ἀπὸ φόρμιγγα πασσάλου λάμβαν'.... ......ἐμὲ δὲ στεφανῶσαι The Ionian branch of the Greek nation retained the name of Pelasgi longer than the Æolians 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 Achæa, and were termed Pelasgi of Ægialus, but also of their brethren of Attica. That the Peloponnesians, however, were originally Æolians or Pelasgians, we have seen abundantly proved. It seems certain from these considerations that the Pelasgic language was Æolic Greek. * Pindar, Olympic, i. + Herod. Polymnia, cap. 94, 95. Scymnus Chius, apud Huds. t. i. It appears from Strabo's account, that of the four Grecian tribes the Æolians 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 Æolian, 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 Πελασγοὶ Αἰγιαλέες. That all the inhabitants of the Peloponnesus were Pelasgi we cannot affirm, but as the language of the Pelasgi was Æolic 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 Ætolia 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, Achæans, Danaidæ, indifferently. It was in a similar 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 Tyrsenian 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. SECTION VII. Of the Nations of Lesser Asia. It is remarkable, when we consider the frequent intercourse of the Greeks with the civilised nations of Asia Minor, and their local proximity to Lydia, Phrygia, and other countries of which Hellenic colonists occupied the sea border, that we should have drawn from the Greek writers so little information respecting the history of these nations. There were several Greek authors, natives of Asia, before Herodotus, whose writings are supposed to have given assistance to that historian in composing several parts of his more celebrated work. Among these were Hecatæus and Hellanicus of Mile * * Herodotus is said by Porphyry (Euseb. Præp. Evang. x. 2,) to have taken from Hecatæus his account of the phoenix, and that of the crocodile and hippoVOL. III. K K |