[419] Xenophon, Hellen. iii. 2, 31.
[420] Larcher, Chronologie d’Hérodote, ch. viii. pp. 215, 274; Raoul Rochette, Histoire des Colonies Grecques, book i. ch. 5; Niebuhr, Römische Geschichte, vol. i. pp. 26-64, 2d ed. (the section entitled Die Oenotrer und Pelasger); O. Müller, Die Etrusker, vol. i. (Einleitung, ch. ii. pp. 75-100); Dr. Thirlwall, History of Greece, vol. i. ch. ii. pp. 36-64. The dissentient opinions of Kruse and Mannert may be found in Kruse, Hellas, vol. i. pp. 398-425; Mannert, Geographie der Griechen und Römer, part viii. Introduct. p. 4, seqq.
Niebuhr puts together all the mythical and genealogical traces, many of them in the highest degree vague and equivocal, of the existence of Pelasgi in various localities; and then, summing up their cumulative effect, asserts (“not as an hypothesis, but with full historical conviction,” p. 54) “that there was a time when the Pelasgians, perhaps the most extended people in all Europe, were spread from the Po and the Arno to the Rhyndakus,” (near Kyzikus,) with only an interruption in Thrace. What is perhaps the most remarkable of all, is the contrast between his feeling of disgust, despair, and aversion to the subject, when he begins the inquiry (“the name Pelasgi,” he says, “is odious to the historian, who hates the spurious philology out of which the pretences to knowledge on the subject of such extinct people arise,” p. 28), and the full confidence and satisfaction with which he concludes it.
[421] Herodot. ii. 23: Ὁ δὲ περὶ τοῦ Ὠκεάνου εἴπας, ἐς ἀφανὲς τὸν μῦθον ἀνενείκας, οὐκ ἔχει ἔλεγχον.
[422] That Krêstôn is the proper reading in Herodotus, there seems every reason to believe—not Krotôn, as Dionys. Hal. represents it (Ant. Rom. i. 26)—in spite of the authority of Niebuhr in favor of the latter.
[423] Thucyd. iv. 109. Compare the new Fragmenta of Strabo, lib. vii. edited from the Vatican MS. by Kramer, and since by Tafel (Tübingen, 1844), sect. 34, p. 26,—ᾤκησαν δὲ τὴν Χεῤῥόνησον ταύτην τῶν ἐκ Λήμνου Πελασγῶν τινες, εἰς πέντε διῃρήμενοι πολίσματα· Κλεωνὰς, Ὀλόφυχον, Ἀκροθώους, Δῖον, Θύσσον.
[424] Herod. i. 57. προσκεχωρηκότων αὐτῷ καὶ ἄλλων ἐθνέων βαρβάρων συχνῶν.
[425] Athenæ. vi. p. 271. Φίλιππος ἐν τῷ περὶ Καρῶν καὶ Λελέγων συγγράμματι, καταλέξας τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίων Εἵλωτας καὶ τοὺς Θετταλικοὺς πενέστας, καὶ Κᾶράς φησι τοῖς Λέλεξιν ὡς οἰκέταις χρήσασθαι πάλαι τε καὶ νῦν.
[426] Herod, i. 57. Ἥντινα δὲ γλῶσσαν ἴεσαν οἱ Πελασγοὶ, οὐκ ἔχω ἀτρεκέως εἶπαι. εἰ δὲ χρεών ἐστι τεκμαιρόμενοις λέγειν τοῖσι νῦν ἔτι ἐοῦσι Πελασγῶν, τῶν ὑπὲρ Τυρσηνῶν Κρηστῶνα πόλιν οἰκεόντων ... καὶ τὴν Πλακιήν τε καὶ Σκυλάκην Πελασγῶν οἰκισάντων ἐν Ἑλλησπόντῳ ... καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα Πελασγικὰ ἐόντα πολίσματα τὸ οὔνομα μετέβαλε· εἰ τουτοῖσι δεῖ λέγειν, ἦσαν οἱ Πελασγοὶ βάρβαρον γλῶσσαν ἱέντες. Εἰ τοίνυν ἦν καὶ πᾶν τοιοῦτο τὸ Πελασγικὸν, τὸ Ἀττικὸν ἔθνος, ἐὸν Πελασγικὸν ἅμα τῇ μεταβολῇ τῇ ἐς Ἕλληνας καὶ τὴν γλῶσσαν μετέμαθε· καὶ γὰρ δὴ οὔτε οἱ Κρηστωνιῆται οὐδάμοισι τῶν νῦν σφέας περιοικεόντων εἰσὶ ὁμόγλωσσοι, οὔτε οἱ Πλακιηνοί· σφίσι δὲ, ὁμόγλωσσοι. δηλοῦσι δὲ, ὅτι τὸν ἠνείκαντο γλώσσης χαρακτῆρα μεταβαίνοντες ἐς ταῦτα τὰ χωρία, τοῦτον ἔχουσι ἐν φυλακῇ.
In the next chapter, Herodotus again calls the Pelasgian nation βάρβαρον.