The application of this reasoning to the Pelasgi is fortified by its being applicable to other Homeric names.
Thraces and Threicii.
It can hardly be doubted that the name Θρῇξ is akin to Τραχὶν and τρῆχυς[252], that it means a highlander, or inhabitant of a rough and mountainous country, and that it included the inhabitants of territories clearly Greek. This extended signification of the term explains the assertion of Herodotus[253], that the Thracians were the most numerous of all nations, after the Indians.
Now Homer makes Thamyris the Bard a Thracian; yet it is clear from his having to do with the Muses, and from the geographical points with which Homer connects his name, that he must be a Greek[254]. They are, Δώριον in the dominions of Pylos, where he met his calamity, and the Œchalia of Eurytus in Thessaly, from whence he was making his journey[255]. Strabo tells us that Pieria and Olympus were anciently Thracian[256], and moreover, that the Thracians of Bœotia consecrated Helicon to the Muses. Orpheus, Musæus, Eumolpus, were held to be Thracians by tradition, yet it also made them write in Greek. I think we may trace this descriptive character of the name Θρῇκες, and its not yet having acquired fully the force of a proper name with Homer, in his employment of it as an adjective, and not a substantive. It is very frequently joined in the poems with the affix ἄνδρες, which he does not employ with such proper names as are in familiar and established use, such as Danaan, Argive, or Achæan. He says Achæan or Danaan heroes, but never joins the names to the simple predicate ‘men.’ When he says Ἀχαιὸς ἄνηρ, it is with a different force; it is in pointing out an individual among a multitude. Indeed in Homer it is not Θρῇξ but Θρηίκιος which means Thracian, of or belonging to the country called Thrace, Θρῄκη. There is then sufficient evidence that Greeks of the highlands might be Thraces; and there may very probably have been whole tribes so called among the Greeks. Yet we never have Thracians named by Homer on the Greek side, while on the Trojan side they appear as supplying no less than two contingents of allies: one in the Catalogue, and another which had just arrived at the period of the Δολώνεια[257].
These two appear to be entirely distinct tribes: because no connection is mentioned between them; because the first contingent is described as being composed not of all the Thracians, but of all the Thracians within the Hellespont: and lastly, because the new comers have their own βασιλεὺς with them, as the first contingent had its leaders, Acamas and Peirous. The Hellespont meant here seems to be the strait, because it is ἀγαρρόος. And it is therefore possible, that while the first contingent was supplied by the nearer tribes, the second may have been composed of those Thracians who lay nearer the Greek border.
Notwithstanding that Mars, who is so inseparably associated with Thrace, fights on the Trojan side, we have no evidence from Homer which would warrant the assumption that he intended to connect the Thracians more intimately with the Pelasgians than with the Hellenes. It may be that the poet’s ethnical knowledge failed him. The wavering of Mars seems to indicate a corresponding uncertainty in his own mind. Perhaps with both the Thracian and Pelasgian names it was the breadth of their range that constituted the difficulty. Some part of Thrace is with him ἐριβώλαξ[258]; it is the part from which the first contingent came, as the son of Peirous belonged to it. And that part is less mountainous than the quarter which I have presumed may have supplied the contingent of Rhesus. The epithet is the very same as is applied to the Pelasgian Larissa[259]: and the Larissan Pelasgians are placed next to the first Thracian contingent in the Trojan Catalogue.
The most probable supposition for Thracians as well as Pelasgians is, that they had affinities in both directions; that they existed among the Greeks diffusively, and were absorbed in names of greater splendour: but that on the Trojan side they still had distinct national existence, and therefore they are named on that side, while to avoid confusion silence is studiously maintained about them on the other. The whole race, says Grote, present a character more Asiatic than European[260].
Caucones and Leleges.
Many other races have been recorded in the later traditions as having in pre-historic times inhabited various parts of Greece. Such are Temnices, Aones, Hyantes, Teleboi. Of these Homer makes no mention. But there are two other races whom he names, the Leleges and Caucones, and with respect to whom Strabo[261] has affirmed, that they were extensively diffused over Greece as well as over Asia Minor.