Similar relations prevail in the Balkan peninsula, where the Mediterranean stock is represented by the "Pelasgic[1078]" substratum. Invented, as has been said, for the purpose of confounding future ethnologists, these Pelasgians certainly present an extremely difficult racial problem, the solution of which has hitherto resisted the combined attacks of ancient and modern students. When Dionysius tells us bluntly that they were Greeks[1079], we fancy the question is settled off-hand, until we find Herodotus describing them a few hundred years earlier as aliens, rude in speech and usages, distinctly not Greeks, and in his time here and there (Thrace, Hellespont) still speaking apparently non-Hellenic dialects[1080]. Then Homer several centuries still earlier, with his epithet of δῖοι, occurring both in the Iliad and the Odyssey[1081], exalts them almost above the level of the Greeks themselves. It would seem, therefore, almost impossible to discover a key to the puzzle, one which will also fit in both with Sergi's Mediterranean theory, and with the results of recent archaeological researches in the Aegean lands. The following hypothesis is supported by a certain amount of evidence. If the pre-Mykenaean culture revealed by Schliemann and others in the Troad, Mykenae, Argos, Tiryns, by Evans and others in Crete, by Cesnola in Cyprus, be ascribed to a pre-Hellenic rather than to a proto-Hellenic people, then the classical references will explain themselves, while this pre-Hellenic race will be readily identified with the Pelasgians, as this term is understood by Sergi.
Theory of pre-Hellenic Pelasgians.
It is, I suppose, universally allowed that Greece really was peopled before the arrival of the Hellenes, which term is here to be taken as comprising all the invading tribes from the north, of which the Achaeans were perhaps the earliest. On their arrival the Hellenes therefore found the land not only inhabited, but inhabited by a cultured people more civilised than themselves, who could thus be identified with Sergi's Pelasgian branch of the Mediterranean or Afro-European stock, whom the proto-Hellenes naturally regarded as their superiors, and whom their first singers also naturally called δῖοι Πελασγοί[1082]. But in the course of a few centuries[1083] these Pelasgians became Hellenised, all but a few scattered groups, which lagging behind in the general social progress are now also looked upon as barbarians, speaking barbaric tongues, and are so described by contemporary historians. Then these few remnants of a glorious but forgotten past are also merged in the Hellenic stream, and can no longer be distinguished from other Greeks by contemporary writers. Hence for Dionysius the Pelasgians are simply Greeks, which in a sense may be true enough. All the heterogeneous elements have been fused in a single Hellenic nationality, built upon a rough Pelasgic substratum, and adorned with all the graces of Hellenic culture.
Now to make good this hypothesis, it is necessary to show, first, that the Pelasgians were not an obscure tribe, a small people confined to some remote corner of Hellas, but a widespread nation diffused over all the land; secondly, that this nation, as far as can now be determined, presented mental and other characters answering to those of Sergi's Mediterraneans, and also such as might be looked for in a race capable of developing the splendid Aegean culture of pre-Hellenic times.
Pelasgians and Mykenaean civilisation.
On the first point it has been claimed that the Pelasgians were so widely distributed[1084] that the difficulty rather is to discover a district where their presence was unknown. They fill the background of Hellenic origins, and even spread beyond the Hellenic horizon, to such an extent that there seems little room for any other people between the Adriatic and the Hellespont. Thus Ridgeway[1085] has brought together a good many passages which clearly establish their universal range, as well as their occupation especially of those places where have been found objects of Mykenaean and pre-Mykenaean culture, such as engraved gems, pottery, implements, buildings, inscriptions in pictographic and syllabic scripts. In Crete they had the "great city of Knossos" in Homer's time[1086]; not only was Mykenae theirs, but the whole of Peloponnesus took the name of Pelasgia; the kings of Tiryns were Pelasgians, and Aeschylus calls Argos a Pelasgian city; an old wall at Athens was attributed to them, and the people of Attica had from all time been Pelasgians[1087]. Orchomenus in Boeotia was founded by a colony from Pelasgiotis in Thessaly; Lesbos also was called Pelasgia, and Homer knew of Pelasgians in the Troad. Their settlements are further traced to Egypt, to Rhodes, Cyprus, Epirus—where Dodona was their ancient shrine—and lastly to various parts of Italy.
Aegean Culture.
Moreover, the Pelasgians were traditionally the civilising element, who taught people to make bread, to yoke the ox to the plough, and to measure land. It would appear from these and other allusions that there were memories of still earlier aborigines, amongst whom the Pelasgians appear as a cultured people, introducing perhaps the arts and industries of the pre-Mykenaean Age. But the assumption, based on no known data, is unnecessary, and it seems more reasonable to look on this culture as locally developed, to some extent under eastern (Egyptian, Babylonian, Hittite?) influences[1088]. Here it is important to note that the Pelasgians were credited with a knowledge of letters[1089], and all this has been advanced as sufficient confirmation of our second postulate. Nevertheless it must be acknowledged that the difficulties are not all overcome by this hypothesis, and the further question of language divides even its stanchest supporters into opposing groups, for while Sergi's Mediterraneans necessarily speak a non-Indo-European language[1090], Ridgeway's Pelasgians speak Aeolic Greek[1091].
Other Views.
The range and importance of the Pelasgians are most strictly limited by J. L. Myres[1092], who thinks that the Alpine type may even be primitive in the Morea, Mediterranean man being an intruder from the south merely fringing the coast and never penetrating inland. The researches of von Luschan in Lycia support this view[1093], and Ripley's map of the present inhabitants of the Balkan peninsula shows the "Greek contingent closely confined to the sea-coast[1094]." Ripley, however, though carefully avoiding any dragging of "Pelasgians" into the question, assumes a primitive substratum of Mediterranean type all over Greece. "The testimony of these ancient Greek crania is perfectly harmonious. All authorities agree that the ancient Hellenes were decidedly long-headed, betraying in this respect their affinity to the Mediterranean Race.... Whether from Attica, from Schliemann's successive cities excavated upon the site of Troy, or from the coast of Asia Minor[1095]; at all times from 400 B.C. to the third century of our era, it would seem proved that the Greeks were of this dolichocephalic type.... Every characteristic of their modern descendants and every analogy with the neighbouring populations, leads us to the conclusion that the classical Hellenes were distinctly of the Mediterranean racial type, little different from the Phoenicians, the Romans or the Iberians[1096]." Nevertheless Dörpfeld[1097] claims that there were, from the first, two races in Greece, a Southern, or Aegean, and a Northern, who were the Aryan Achaeans of history, and recent archaeological discoveries certainly support this view.