We must proceed, however, to consider that portion of the evidence in the case, which is external to the Homeric Poems.
Besides what has been up to this point incidentally touched, there is a great mass of extra-Homeric testimony, which tends, when read in the light of Homer, to corroborate the views which have here been taken of the Pelasgi, as one of the main coefficients of the Greek nation.
In the first chapter of the able work of Bishop Marsh, entitled, Horæ Pelasgicæ[355], will be found an ample collection of passages from Greek writers, which, though many of them are in themselves slight, and any one if taken singly could be of little weight for the purpose of proof, yet collectively indicate that the possession of the entire country at the remotest period by the Pelasgi was little less than an universal and invariable tradition. I will here collect some portion of the evidence which may be cited to this effect.
Coming next to Homer in time and in authority, Hesiod supports him, as we have seen above[356], in associating Dodona both with the Pelasgic and with the Hellic races; placing it, just as Homer does, in the midst of the latter, and more distinctly than Homer indicating its foundation by the former. It may be observed that, in a Fragment, he questionably personifies Pelasgus[357].
Next we find the very ancient poet Asius, according to the quotation of Pausanias[358], assigning the very highest antiquity to the Pelasgian race, by making Pelasgus the father of men;
ἀντίθεον δὲ Πελασγὸν ἐν ὑψικόμοισιν ὄρεσσι
γαῖα μέλαιν’ ἀνέδωκεν, ἵνα θνητῶν γένος εἴη.
Among the Greek writers, not being historians themselves, of the historic period, there is none whose testimony bears, to my perception, so much of the true archaic stamp, as Æschylus. It seems as if we could trace in him a greater piety towards Homer, and we certainly find a more careful regard both to his characters and his facts, than were afterwards commonly paid to them. Nay he excels in this respect the Cyclic poets. They were much nearer in date to the great master, but he, as it were, outran them, by a deeper and nobler sympathy. In him, too, the drama had not yet acquired the character, which effaces or impairs its claims to historical authority: which earned for it the ἐκτραγῳδεῖν of Aristotle[359] and Polybius[360], and on which was founded the declaration of Socrates in the Minos, Ἀττικὸν λέγεις μῦθον καὶ τραγικόν[361]. Even where he speaks allegorically, he seems to represent the first form of allegory, in which it is traceably moulded upon history, and serves for its key. It is not therefore unreasonable to attach importance to his rendering of the public tradition respecting the Pelasgi, which we find in a remarkable passage of the Supplices;
τοῦ γηγενοῦς γάρ εἰμ’ ἐγὼ Παλαίχθονος
ἶνις Πελασγὸς, τῆσδε γῆς ἀρχηγέτης.
ἐμοῦ δ’ ἄνακτος εὐλόγως ἐπώνυμον
γένος Πελασγῶν τήνδε καρποῦται χθόνα[362].
Pelasgus, himself the speaker, then describes his dominions as reaching from Peloponnesus (χώρη Ἀπίη) in the south to the river Strymon in the north (πρὸς δύνοντος ἡλίου), and declares how Apis, coming from Acarnania, had fitted the country for the abode of man by clearing it of wild beasts. Acarnania marks the line of country, which formed the ordinary route from Thessaly to Peloponnesus. Taken literally, Pelasgus is the son of the Earthborn, and the name-giver of the Pelasgian race. What the passage signifies evidently is, that by ancient tradition the Pelasgians were the first occupants of the country, and that they reached from the north to the south of Greece. It is in the reign of this mythical Pelasgus, that Danaus reaches the Peloponnesus.
Of such an eponymus Thessaly, Argos, and Arcadia had each their separate tradition in its appropriate dress. Pausanias reports the Arcadian one very fully: and according to its tenour Pelasgus taught the use of dwellings and clothes, and to eat chestnuts instead of roots, grass, and leaves[363]. The tomb of Pelasgus was pretended to be shown at Argos.