Nearly all writers who treat of Grecian history or antiquities, have ventured more or less upon inquiries respecting the original inhabitants of the country, some contending that it was peopled by many independent races, while others content themselves with supposing one primary stock. To arrive at certainty in such investigations is scarcely to be hoped for, since, over the whole field, facts have moved in so close a conjunction with fables, “that the most which remaineth to be seen, is the show of dark and obscure steps where some part of the truth hath gone.”[[6]] It appears, however, to be a fact established, that the Hellenes were not the first who occupied Greece. They were preceded by a number of tribes all apparently of Pelasgian origin. But who and what the Pelasgians were, how and whence they came into the country, and by what gradations and influences they were ripened into Hellenes, or were by these expelled from the land, are questions to which no satisfactory answers have ever been given, but must still be discussed whatever the result of the investigation may be.
Even the name of this people has opened up an endless labyrinth of conjecture, at least among the moderns, for the ancients when such points were to be cleared up, easily removed the difficulty by inventing a hero or a demigod, with an appellation exactly suited to their purpose. Thus from Hellen they derived the name of the Hellenes, from Heracles that of Heracleidæ, from Ion that of the Ionians, and from Pelasgos, the son sometimes of Zeus, sometimes of Poseidon, sometimes of Triops or Inachos or Lycaon or Palachthon or of the earth itself,[[7]] that of the Pelasgi. An Attic writer, familiar with this question, and hinting at a part of the theory which I have adopted, imagines the name of Pelasgi to have been at first bestowed on the race because they usually made their appearance on the shores of Hellas like migratory birds in spring.[[8]] But though conjecture in such matters may amuse, it is not likely, at this distance of time, to lead to truth.
The ancients had evidently formed no theory as to whence the Pelasgi came, but were satisfied with the notion of their autochthoneïty,[[9]] which we cannot adopt. It must be acknowledged, however, that we are little able to trace them with certainty beyond the limits of Greece, before their arrival in that country. My own opinion is, that when the migrations began from that vast and lofty table land of Central Asia, which formed the primitive abode of mankind, and where the mother language of the Sanskrit, the Greek, and many other dialects was first spoken, the illustrious race, afterwards known under the name of Pelasgi, moved westward by the Caspian, along the Caucasian range, through Armenia and Kourdistân, until they descended into the plains of Asia Minor. Here we seem to touch upon the obscurest verge of Grecian fable, for the tradition which sent Argo to Colchis, at the Eastern extremity of the Black Sea, evidently contemplated the people of the land as a kindred race, of similar faith, character, and manners. By what precise channel the stream of population rolled westward, cannot be determined: but here and there, on the southern shores of the Euxine, we discover some obscure footsteps of the parents of the Greeks, as they continued their journeyings towards the land which they were afterwards to encircle with glory. Moving through Pontos, Paphlagonia, and Bithynia, they appear everywhere to have made settlements on the coast, until they reached the narrow stream of the Bosporos, over which they threw themselves into Europe.
Up to this point we have little whereon to build our conclusions, save what is supplied by the general theory of ancient migrations, and what appear to be facts dimly seen within the extreme orbit of mythology. The ancients themselves seem to have obtained some uncertain glimpses of links connecting their ancestors with Asiatic Scythia, for there were those among them who represented the Caucons of Paphlagonia stretching along the banks of the Parthenios, and between the Maryandinians and the sea, as a nation of Scythian origin. Now the Caucons were undoubtedly Pelasgians, as were the Phrygians, the Carians, and the Leleges, who, united by the ties of blood, flocked to the defence of Troy.[[10]] In a much remoter age, the heroes of the traditional Argo were, it is said, confounded by night at Cyzicos,[[11]] in Mysia, with the warlike Pelasgi, even then masters of the sea, and accustomed with their galleys to vex the coast and plunder the settled inhabitants. I regard the working of the gold and silver mines on the southern shores of the Euxine, anterior to the Trojan war, as another proof of the settlement of the Pelasgi in that part of Asia Minor;[[12]] and who but they, at a period beyond the reach of tradition, could have opened those gold mines on the shores of Thrace, which on his conquest of the country Philip of Macedon found to have been long ago worked and abandoned by some unknown people?[[13]]
Be this as it may, it was over the Bosporos and through Thrace that the Pelasgi seem to have made their earliest approaches towards Greece. The Thracians themselves were of Pelasgian origin. Thracians inhabited both sides of the Bosporos; traces of Pelasgian settlements and Pelasgian names are likewise found on both sides. The stream of knowledge unquestionably poured through Thrace into Greece; and it is highly probable that the stream of population had, at a remoter period, flowed in the same channel. Once in Macedonia, the adventurers would be tempted southward by the beauty of the climate and country; so that while some moved up the valley of the Haliacmon, others, perhaps, took possession of the ridge of Olympos, Ossa and Pelion, where they were known under the names of Centaurs and Lapithæ.[[14]] From these lofty ridges they looked down upon the great lake which in those ages covered the whole plain of Thessaly, and, following the ramifications of the mountains, peopled Pelasgian Argos, Phthiotis, and the roots of Œta, while the lowlands were still under water: thence, too, they crossed over into Eubœa, where they assumed the names of Macrones[[15]] and Curetes. This latter tribe settling at Chalcis,[[16]] and having been worsted in a contest for the Lalantian plain, fled across the Euripos, and traversing the whole of Bœotia, founded a new settlement about Pleuron in Ætolia, and gave the name of Curetis to the whole country. Hence, also, in process of time, they were driven by the Ætolians from Pisa in Elis, upon which they took refuge in Acarnania.[[17]]
But the principal tribe, and that which subsequently spread throughout Greece, after filling with population the valley of the Haliacmon, traversing the Caulavian range, and descending along the course of the Aoös, seem on the banks of the Celydnos, to have turned their faces southward. Following that stream upwards towards its source, they found themselves in Epeiros, a land abounding with water brooks, with lovely mountains, and lovelier valleys, and at length settled, and erected themselves lasting habitations in the sacred neighbourhood of Dodona,[[18]] where the first oracle known to the Hellenes flourished under the protection of the Pelasgian Zeus.[[19]]
Up to this point we have been treading, with little or no light to guide us, over a soil shifting, unsure, and treacherous; but here we touch upon comparatively firm ground, while the light of poetry dawns around, and enables us to direct our footsteps towards the luminous terra firma of history.
It must not be denied that much of the foregoing theory is erected on inference and conjecture. Nevertheless, it rests in part on facts which an historian ought not to reject. For example, though it be nowhere, perhaps, distinctly stated that the Thracians were entirely of Pelasgian origin, we are compelled by various circumstances to believe that such was the case: first, Samothrace on the coast was undoubtedly peopled by Pelasgi;[[20]] secondly, the Macedonians, plainly of the same stock with the Thracians, are acknowledged to have been Pelasgi;[[21]] and since the Illyrians likewise were a kindred people,[[22]] we have a line of Pelasgian settlements stretching along the whole northern frontier of Greece, the Ægæan, the Hellespont, and the Propontis, from the Adriatic to the Black Sea. The chain of proofs, indeed, is not complete, but appears and disappears alternately, like the stream of the Alpheios, though little doubt can be entertained of the existence of the links which happen to lie out of sight. In nearly every part of Macedonia the footsteps of the Pelasgi are clearly discernible; at Crestona,[[23]] on the Echidoros in Pœonia; in Emathea, and Bottiœa;[[24]] and looking at the language of the country, we find it at all times to have been identical with that of Greece. That the same thing must be predicated of Thrace, even in the remotest ages, appears indisputably from this, that her bards, Thamyris and Orpheus traversed the whole of Hellas, and sang their wisdom to its inhabitants; while Olen coming from Lycia, a Pelasgian settlement,[[25]] likewise brought his kindred songs to the same tolerant and hospitable land.
But to follow the movements of the Pelasgi through Greece itself, where, though no chronology of events can be attempted, our views rest on a stable foundation. Much, however, of our reasoning will be confused or perhaps unintelligible, if it be not borne in mind that the name of the Pelasgi, like that of the Tartars or Arabs, was a general appellation applied to the whole race, while the several tribes bore separate denominations; as the Chaones,[[26]] the Dryopes, the Leleges, the Caucons, the Cranaans, with many others,[[27]] precisely as among the Arabs, we find the Ababde, the Mahazi, the Beni Sakker, &c. The Pelasgian tribe which first made its appearance, and became powerful in Epeiros, a country not to be separated from Greece, was that of the Chaones, whose chief seat was Cheimera,[[28]] at the foot of the Ceraunian mountains. An obscure scholiast, indeed, denominates them barbarians;[[29]] but as from the best authority we know them to have been Pelasgi, this shows the value of the term in the mouth of the later writers. Another class,—the Levites, perhaps, of those primitive people,—settled amid the oak forests which surrounded the lovely lake of Dodona, where under the name of Selli,[[30]] they founded the most celebrated oracle of early antiquity. In their habits they remind us of the Sanyasis, and other religious anchorites of India, living from views of penance with unwashed feet, and sleeping on the bare ground. Other tribes renowned of old in Epeiros, and all Pelasgian,[[31]] were the Thesprotians, the Molossians, the Perrhæbians, and the Dolopians, the last rough mountaineers inhabiting both the eastern and western slopes of Pindos.[[32]]
When Epeiros had been thus thickly sprinkled with settlements, an earthquake appears to have produced in the range of Pelion the narrow precipitous gap, afterwards known as Tempe, by which the waters of the Thessalian lake discharged themselves into the sea. This happened, we are told, while one Pelasigos[[33]] reigned over the mountaineers in the district of Hæmonia. They were celebrating a great feast, when a certain slave named Peloros, brought them tidings of what had come to pass, speaking with admiration of the vast plains which were appearing through the ebbing waters. In gratitude for the news he communicated, they caused the man to seat himself at table while both the king and his attendants, in the joy and fulness of their hearts ministered to him. This, it is said, was the origin of the Pelorian festival, afterwards, down to a very late period, celebrated with great pomp and magnificence in Thessaly, where, for the day, masters changed condition with their slaves, and became their servants.[[34]] The same festival in the Pelasgian settlements of Italy was known down to the latest times, under the name of Saturnalia.