The Greek nation was originally formed of two great coefficients, the Hellic and Pelasgic races respectively: and there is no evidence, that any other race entered largely into its composition, or modified it sensibly: although individual foreigners or companies of emigrants, which left little impression on the names of districts or races, may notwithstanding have exercised a powerful influence from time to time. We may consider the Leleges, Caucones, and other pre-Hellenic tribes as branches of the Pelasgian family, or as akin to it rather than to the Hellic stem.
There is Homeric and post-Homeric evidence, which seems to shew us the Pelasgians established through Greece from Macedonia in the north, to Crete in the south: as well as in Italy, and elsewhere beyond the borders of Greece.
It is on the whole most probable, that the Pelasgians principally entered Greece from the south by Crete; but they may have entered it in both directions. In either case, there is no other people to dispute with them in continental Greece the title of its first regular settlers. They chose their habitations in the plains, and were essentially a lowland people. It is even likely that they derive their name from this characteristic, and that it marks them at once as agriculturists.
As respects the religion of Greece, its most essential features were probably common to the two races: a principle illustrated by the fact that the Helli, by a kind of natural succession, become the wardens and interpreters of the great Pelasgian shrine of Jupiter at Dodona.
The first form of the religion of Greece was probably due to the Pelasgians; and moreover it would appear to be from them that it received, in the main, its ritual and hierarchical, as contradistinguished from its imaginative, development. They appear to have incorporated it in visible institutions, and to have given social order to the country; probably in that form in which men live sparsely, and not in the large aggregations of considerable cities. But social order in any form implies some means of defence against the lawless: and we must view the Pelasgians as having introduced the construction of works of this class, which were then of prime necessity to the existence of communities. Their standing pursuit was evidently that of agriculture: the only link of connection established by Homer between them and the beautiful in art, is the doubtful one of the epithets περικαλλέα and καλὰ[606] applied to the architecture of the palaces of Priam and Paris respectively.
In general, the Pelasgian race, though without the vivid temperament of the Hellic tribes, yet would appear to have been both brave and solid in character.
The stream of Pelasgic immigration, flowing chiefly northward, is met by the counter-stream of Hellic tribes, proceeding from the highland nation of the Helli, which had taken its seat in the mountains to the north of Thessaly.
They in their southward course overspread the same countries which the Pelasgi had already occupied; successive tribes of immigrants going forth from the parent stock at different times, as the pressure of population on the means of subsistence required it, and under different names, taken in all likelihood from their leaders.
In the nest of mountaineers, barbarism, or at least rudeness, continues: but as the young broods go forth, and make their way into more favourable conditions of physical and social life, their great capacities for development find scope, and they rapidly assume a new character.
By their greater energy and activity, they became everywhere the dominant race. Policy and war fell into their hands: they supplied the more vigorous, intellectual, and imaginative element in the wonderful composition of the Greek mind. Of the Pelasgian imagination it is difficult to speak in a definite manner: but it probably had not that masculine tone, and energetic movement, when alone, which marks the mind of Greece.