The Historians' History of the World 03

Moreover, even if a Pelasgian people ever had existed in the wide extent attributed to them by tradition, the Greeks of antiquity would no more have conceived of them as being a single nation, than they themselves became conscious of their national unity before the eighth century; they would have designated the several Pelasgian tribes by different names. This alone shows that we are not dealing here with real historical tradition, quite apart from the fact that there is no historical tradition from the time preceding the colonisation of Asia Minor. Here also it is a question of mere theorising, and the theories already presuppose the existence of the Iliad and Odyssey, even to their later songs, so that they cannot be older than the seventh or sixth century. Historically the Pelasgians can be traced only in Thessaly. Pelasgiotis is thus equivalent to Pelasgia, just as Thessaliotis is equivalent to Thessalia and Elimiotis to Elimea. The Pelasgiots, however, of historic times were of Grecian origin and we have not the slightest reason to suppose that the same was not true of prehistoric times. Indeed the Thessalian plain in all probability is the place in which the Hellenes first made permanent settlements.

A similar position to that of the Pelasgians is occupied by the Leleges in tradition. Homer speaks of them as inhabiting Pedasus in southern Troy and even Alcæus calls Antandrus, situated in this region, a Lelegean town. Later comers regarded the Leleges as the original inhabitants of Caria, where there was also a Pedasus; even in the Hellenistic period they were said to have formed a clan of serfs in this region, like the Heliots in Sparta. Old fortresses and tombstones, concerning the origin of which nothing was known, were ascribed to the Leleges, just as we speak of “Pelasgian” walls. It was also supposed that the whole Ionian coast and the islands near it were once inhabited by these people. It was natural to suppose a similar relationship for European Greece and here also to let a Lelegean population precede the Hellenic. Supports for this theory were found in a number of local names, such as Physcus and Larymna in Locris, Abæ in Phocis, Pedasus in Messenia, which occur in an identical or similar form in Caria. One of the two citadels of Megara was called Caria; and Zeus Carios was worshipped in various parts of Greece. Accordingly, Leleges or Carians were said to have lived in all these places. The supposition that the southern part of the Hellenic peninsula was occupied by a Carian population in a pre-Grecian period has, as we have seen, a great deal in its favour; only we should avoid trying to discover historical tradition in late suppositions, since Homer still knows nothing of all these myths and Hesiod is the first to make Locrus rule over the Leleges.

Nor does Homer know anything of Thracians outside of their historic abodes to the north of the Ægean Sea. Later tradition places them in Phocian Daulis and in Bœotia on the Helicon. The most direct cause for this was probably furnished by the race of Thracidæ, which attained a prominent position in Delphi and which had probably spread into other Phocian cities as well; another reason was the name of the Daulian king, Tereus, which had a Thracian sound, and lastly, the cult of the Muses which had a home on the Helicon, as also on Olympus in Thracian Pieria. Mysteries were connected with this cult even at a comparatively early period, as is shown by the legends of Orpheus and Musæus. Hence Eumolpus, the mythical founder of the Eleusinian mysteries, was held to be a Thracian; his very name shows that he is connected with the worship of the Muses, even if he were not expressly said to be the son of Musæus. The historic value of this tradition is thus sufficiently demonstrated.

There were also traditions of immigrations from the Orient into Greece. These were based in part upon solar myths, which have given rise to similar legends among the most widely separated peoples; they also reflect the consciousness that the rudiments of a higher civilisation were brought to the Greeks from the East. In the form in which we have them, these myths are without exception late formations, which presuppose close relations between Greece and the old civilisations of Asia and Egypt. In Homer, accordingly, there is no trace of them.