Thus, then, we have traced this illustrious people under various names through every region of Greece, save Attica; and there also they were found, but whether they arrived by land or sea, I profess myself wholly unable to determine. A modern historian[[106]] who experienced the same difficulty, observes, that the Ionians appear to have dropped from heaven into Attica. Unquestionably we do not know whence they came, and as their own legends represent them as autochthons[[107]] we can expect no aid from tradition. The most probable supposition is, that when the migratory hordes were pushing southward from Thessaly, some clans, more fortunate than the rest, traversing the heights of Cithæron soon found themselves in possession of this unfertile but lovely land, covered in those ages with forests, diversified by hill and dale, and breathing perfume from every thicket. The succeeding tide of emigration breaking against the ridge of Cithæron seems to have turned westward and flowed into the Peloponnesos, leaving Attica unmolested. Some have regarded its own barrenness as the rampart which protected it from invasion. But why may we not suppose that the inhabitants finding themselves thriving and tranquil, resolved early to fight for their possessions, and hedged themselves from invasion by courage and arms? be this as it may, Attica was the first part of Hellas that enjoyed permanent exemption from war, so that the olive, its principal ornament and riches, became in all after ages the emblem of peace. Once settled in this country the Pelasgi were never driven thence,[[108]] nor did they ever receive any considerable mixture of foreign settlers. Individuals from time to time were permitted to take up their abode among them; but, in this favoured spot, unalloyed by foreign mixture, the Pelasgic genius completely developed itself, and reached the highest pitch of civilisation known to the ancient world.
The earliest name bestowed on the Pelasgian tribe which held Attica was that of Cranaans;[[109]] but whether they were so distinguished before their migration thither, or, which is more probable, derived their appellation from the rocky nature[[110]] of their country, does not appear. Like most of the ancient nations, however, they frequently changed their name: at first perhaps simply Pelasgi, next Cranaans, then Cecropidæ and Ionians; afterwards, under the reign of Erechtheus they obtained from their patron divinity the name of Athenians, by which they have been known down to the present day. Among the fables of the mythology we discover traces of several attempts at disputing with the Aborigines the sovereignty of Attica. Thus Eumolpos, with a colony of Thracians, is by one tradition said to have obtained possession of the whole country,[[111]] while another and more probable legend represents him as settling with a small band at Eleusis, where his family during the whole existence of Paganism exercised the office of priests of Demeter.[[112]] The Cretans again under Minos sought to obtain a footing in the country; but the close of the tradition which speaks of this invasion shows that though disgraceful to Attica it was without any permanent result. Afterwards, when the unsettled Pelasgi had degenerated into pirates and freebooters, a powerful band of them appears to have found its way thither, and obtained a settlement in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital,[[113]] on condition, apparently, of labouring at the erection of walls round the Acropolis. A portion of the fortifications is said to have been completed by these marauders, and to have obtained from them the name of the Pelasgian wall. But even these strangers were not suffered to remain; quarrels arising either about the land which the Pelasgi had obtained on the slopes of Hymettos, or on account of violence offered to certain Athenian maidens descending to the fountain of Callirrhoë for water. The emigrants were expelled and took refuge in Lemnos. In revenge for what they regarded as an injury, they carried away a number of Attic virgins who were celebrating the festival of Artemis at Brauron, which led in after times to the capture of Lemnos by Miltiades.
It seems to result from the above inquiry that every district in Hellas was originally peopled by the Pelasgi, which the poets in after ages expressed by saying that a king of that nation reigned over the whole country as far northward as the Strymon in Thrace.[[114]]
We have shown that their dominions extended much further, and included not Thrace only, beyond the limits of Greece, but a great part likewise of Asia Minor and nearly every island in the Ægæan. But even these spacious limits were not wide enough to contain[contain] the whole Pelasgian population; for traversing the Adriatic, they penetrated into Etruria, and there and elsewhere in Italy, under the name of Tyrrhenians, erected Cyclopian cities, and deposited the germs of its future civilisation.[[115]] Hence the great resemblance which historians and antiquaries have observed between the Etruscans and the Greeks. Both were offshoots from the great Pelasgic stem; though the simplicity of the original race in religion and manners maintained longer its ground in Italy than under the warmer skies of Greece. In these more western settlements, however, new tribes sprang up, who in glory eclipsed the mother race, which they learned to regard with contempt, so that they bestowed the name of Pelasgi on their slaves. A similar circumstance had previously occurred in Asia Minor, where the Carians reduced to servitude such of their brethren as in later times retained the name of Leleges.[[116]]
If now we cast a rapid glance over the sciences and civilisation of the Pelasgi, we shall probably have acquired as complete an idea of that ancient people as existing monuments enable us to frame.[[117]] Tradition attributed to them the invention of several arts of primary necessity, as those of building houses and manufacturing clothing, which they did from the skins of wild boars, the animals first slain by man for food. A relic of this primitive style of dress remained, we are told, to a very late age among the rustics of Phocis and Eubœa.[[118]] Other traditions will have it that mankind fed on grass and herbs until the Pelasgi taught them the greater refinement of feeding upon acorns. But leaving these poetical fancies, we shall find in many genuine monuments and facts undisputed proofs of the power and knowledge of the Pelasgi. In the first place, they it was who bequeathed to their Hellenic descendants some knowledge, though imperfect and obscure, of the true God.[[119]] In their minds the recognition of the unity of the Divine Being formed the basis of theology, and the philosophers of after ages who reasoned best and thought most correctly rose no higher on these points than their rude ancestors.
But the natural tendency of the human mind to error soon disturbed the simplicity of their faith; for as the tribes separated, each taking a different direction, they all in turns learned to consider the God as their patron, so that speedily there were as many gods as tribes, and polytheism was created. Thus the Pelasgi, who had at first like the polished nations of modern times no name for the gods, because they believed in but one, degenerated in the course of time, and invented that system of divinities and heroes which afterwards prevailed in Greece. They, too, it was, who in the developement of their superstition made the first steps towards the arts by setting up rude images of the powers they worshipped, and to them accordingly the introduction of the Hermæan statues at Athens is attributed.[[120]] There was likewise in a temple of Demeter between mount Eboras and Taygetos, a wooden statue of Orpheus, supposed to be the workmanship of the Pelasgi.[[121]] Evidently too, the worship of Demeter, and of all the rural gods grew up originally among them, as did likewise the adoration of supreme power and supreme wisdom in Zeus and Athena.[[122]]
Usually the Pelasgi are considered as a much wandering people,[[123]] though it would be more correct to represent them, like the Anglo-Saxon race in modern times, as the prolific parents of many settlements, spreading widely, but taking root wherever they spread. A proof of this still exists in the vast structures[[124]] which they reared, whose ruins are yet found scattered through Asia, Greece, and Italy. These Cyclopian buildings, palaces, treasuries, fortresses, barrows, were not the works of nomadic hordes, but of a people attached to the soil and resolute in defending it. Navigation, likewise, they cultivated, and were among the earliest nations who possessed a power at sea,[[125]] which led necessarily to the study of astronomy, together with the occult science of the stars.[[126]] Of their progress in the more ordinary arts of utility we have very little knowledge, but we find in the Iliad a Pelasgian woman staining ivory to be used as ornaments of a war-horse;[[127]] the invention of the shepherd’s crook was attributed to them; so likewise was the religious dance called Hyporchema;[[128]] their proficiency in music is spoken of;[[129]] and their pre-eminence in war was signified by representing them as inventors of the shield.[[130]]
On the language of the Pelasgi various opinions are entertained. Some, relying on particular passages in ancient writers, have imagined that it was very different from the Greek,[[131]] but although in support of such an opinion much ingenuity may be exhibited there are circumstances which compel us to reject it. The Athenians and Arcadians, for example, though of Pelasgian origin, spoke, and that from the remotest times, the same language with the rest of the Greeks; and though the Æolic dialect,[[132]] the most ancient in Arcadia, or indeed in all Greece, was transformed to Latin in Italy, we are not on that account to infer that Latin bore a closer resemblance than the Greek to the mother tongue of both. The Pelasgian language indeed appears to have been the Hellenic in the earlier stages of its formation, just as the Pelasgi themselves were Greeks under another name and in a ruder state of civilisation. Whether they possessed any knowledge of written characters before[[133]] the introduction of the Phœnician we have now no means of ascertaining, the passages usually brought forward in behalf of such an opinion being of small authority. To them, however, tradition attributes the introduction of letters into Latium,[[134]] and there can be no doubt that the use of written characters was known in Greece before its inhabitants had ceased to be called Pelasgi.
I have now, I imagine, proved that the Pelasgi whencesoever they came, occupied, under one name or another, the whole continent of Greece and most of the islands. The Athenians, and consequently the Ionians, are on all hands acknowledged to have sprung from the Pelasgian stock. It only remains to be shown that the Dorians also traced their origin to this people, and we shall be satisfied that the whole of the illustrious nation, known to history under the name of Greeks, flowed from one and the same source. The Hellenes, of whom the Dorians were a tribe,[[135]] occupied in later times the south of Thessaly, but at a much earlier period, along with the Selli,[[136]] dwelt in the mountainous tracts about Dodona, where they were known under the name of Greeks or mountaineers,[[137]] which was the original signification of the term. This district of Epeiros, it has been shown, was among the very earliest of the Pelasgian settlements, from which of itself it might be inferred that the Hellenes were Pelasgi. We are not left to rely in this matter on mere inference, since Herodotus states distinctly that they were a fragment of the Pelasgi.[[138]]
It will be seen that I have hitherto made no allusion to the received fables about Egyptian and Phœnician colonies.[[139]] Nevertheless it is quite possible that on many occasions certain fugitives, both from Phœnicia and Egypt, may have taken refuge in Greece, and been permitted, as in after ages, to settle there. These persons, coming from countries farther advanced in civilisation, would undoubtedly bring along with them a superior degree of knowledge in many useful arts, which, in gratitude for their hospitable reception, they would undoubtedly communicate to the inhabitants. But the most active agent in the diffusion of civilisation was probably commerce, which, by bringing neighbouring nations into close contact, by enlarging the sphere of their experience, and teaching them the advantages to be derived from peaceful intercourse, has in all ages softened and refined mankind. When the use of letters began first to prevail in the East is not known, but it was probably communicated early to the Pelasgi, along with the materials for writing; and whatever inventions were made on either side of the Mediterranean passed rapidly from shore to shore, so that the civilisation of the Egyptians, Phœnicians, and Greeks, advanced simultaneously, though the beginnings of improvement were undoubtedly more ancient on the banks of the Nile and among the maritime Arabs than in Hellas. The amount, however, of eastern influences I conceive was not great, and as to colonies, properly so called, with the exception of those already described from Asia Minor, I believe there never were any.