Pelasgian Presence In Ancient Texts (English)

The name Pelasgians (, ) was used by Classical Greek writers to refer either to the predecessors of the Greeks, or to all the inhabitants of Greece before the emergence of the Greeks. In general, "Pelasgian" has come to mean more broadly all the indigenous inhabitants of the Aegean Sea region and their cultures, and British historian Peter Green comments on it as .

In the Classic period, enclaves under that name survived in several locations of mainland Greece, Crete, and other regions of the Aegean. Populations identified as "Pelasgian" spoke a language or languages that at the time Greeks identified as "barbarian", though some ancient writers nonetheless described the Pelasgians as Greeks. A tradition also survived that large parts of Greece had once been Pelasgian before being Hellenized. These parts fell largely, though far from exclusively, within the territory which by the 5th century BC was inhabited by those speakers of ancient Greek who were identified as Ionians and Aeolians.

Etymology

Much like all other aspects of the "Pelasgians", their ethnonym (''Pelasgoi'') is of extremely uncertain provenance and etymology. Michael Sakellariou collects fifteen different etymologies proposed for it by philologists and linguists during the last two hundred years, though he admits that .

An ancient etymology based on mere similarity of sounds links ''pelasgos'' to ''pelargos'' , postulating that the Pelasgians were migrants like storks, possibly from Arcadia, where they nest. Aristophanes deals effectively with this etymology in his comedy '' The Birds''. One of the laws of "the storks" in the satirical Cloud Cuckoo Land (), playing upon the Athenian belief that they were originally Pelasgians, is that grown-up storks must support their parents by migrating elsewhere and conducting warfare.

Gilbert Murray summarized the derivation from ''pelas gē'' , current at his time: .

Julius Pokorny derived Pelasgoi from ''*pelag-skoi'' ; specifically, . He details a previous derivation, which appears in English at least as early as William Ewart Gladstone's ''Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age''; if the Pelasgians were not Indo-Europeans, the name in this derivation must have been assigned by the Hellenes. Ernest Klein argued that the ancient Greek word for , ''pelagos'', and the Doric word ''plagos'' (which is flat), shared the same root, ''*plāk-'', and that ''*pelag-skoi'' therefore meant , where the sea is flat.

Ancient literary evidence

Literary analysis has been ongoing since classical Greece, when the writers of those times read previous works on the subject. No definitive answers were ever forthcoming by this method; it rather served to better define the problems. The method perhaps reached a peak in the Victorian era when new methods of systematic comparison began to be applied in philology. Typical of the era is the study by William Ewart Gladstone, who was a trained classicist. Unless further ancient texts come to light, advances on the subject cannot be made. Therefore the most likely source of progress regarding the Pelasgians continues to be archaeology and related sciences.

The term "Pelasgians" in ancient sources

The definition of the term ''Pelasgians'' in ancient sources was fluid. The Pelasgians were variously described by ancient authors as Greek, semi-Greek, non-Greek and pre-Greek. There are no ''emic'' perspectives of Pelasgian identity. According to an analysis by historian Tristn Lambright of Jacksonville State University:

Poets

Homer

In the ''Iliad'', there were Pelasgians on both sides of the Trojan War. In the section known as the ''Catalogue of Trojans'', they are mentioned between the Hellespontine cities and the Thracians of Southeastern Europe (i.e.,on the Hellespontine border of Thrace). Homer calls their town or district "Larisa" and characterises it as fertile, and its inhabitants as celebrated for their spearsmanship. He records their chiefs as Hippothous and Pylaeus, sons of Lethus, son of Teutamides. The ''Iliad'' also refers to the camp at Greece, specifically at "Argos Pelasgikon", which is most likely to be the plain of Thessaly, and to "Pelasgic Zeus", living in and ruling over Dodona. Additionally, according to the ''Iliad'', Pelasgians were camping out on the shore together with the following tribes:

Towards the sea lie the Carians and the Paeonians, with curved bows, and the Leleges and Caucones, and the goodly Pelasgi.

In the ''Odyssey'', they appear among the inhabitants of Crete. Odysseus, affecting to be Cretan himself, instances Pelasgians among the tribes in the ninety cities of Crete, . Last on his list, Homer distinguishes them from other ethnicities on the island: "Cretans proper", Achaeans, Cydonians (of the city of Cydonia/modern Chania), Dorians, and "noble Pelasgians".

Hesiod

Hesiod, in a fragment known from Strabo, calls Dodona, identified by reference to "the oak", the "seat of Pelasgians", thus explaining why Homer, in referring to Zeus as he ruled over Dodona, did ''not'' style him "''Dodonic''" but ''Pelasgic'' Zeus. He mentions also that Pelasgus (Greek: Πελασγός, the eponymous ancestor of the Pelasgians) was the father of King Lycaon of Arcadia.

Asius of Samos

Asius of Samos () describes Pelasgus as the first man, born of the earth. This account features centrally in the construction of an enduring autochthonous Arcadian identity into the Classical period. In a fragment quoted by Pausanias, Asius describes the foundational hero of the Greek ethnic groups as .

Aeschylus

Aeschylus incorporates all the territories that the Archaic tradition identifies as Pelasgian, including Thessaly (the region of Homer's Pelasgian Argos), Dodona (the seat of Homer's Pelasgian Zeus), and Arcadia (the region ruled by autochthonous Pelasgus's son Lycaon) into an Argive-Pelasgian kingdom ruled by Pelasgus. This affirms the ancient Greek origins of the Pelasgians as well as their widespread settlements throughout central Greece and the Peloponnese.

In Aeschylus's play, '' The Suppliants'', the Danaids fleeing from Egypt seek asylum from King Pelasgus of Argos, which he says is on the Strymon, including Perrhaebia in the north, the Thessalian Dodona and the slopes of the Pindus mountains on the west and the shores of the sea on the east; that is, a territory including but somewhat larger than classical Pelasgiotis. The southern boundary is not mentioned; however, Apis is said to have come to Argos from Naupactus "across" (''peras''), implying that Argos includes all of east Greece from the north of Thessaly to the Peloponnesian Argos, where the Danaids are probably to be conceived as having landed. He claims to rule the Pelasgians and to be the .

The Danaids call the country the "Apian hills" and claim that it understands the ''karbana audan'' (accusative case, and in the Dorian dialect), which many translate as "barbarian speech" but Karba (where the ''Karbanoi'' live) is in fact a non-Greek word. They claim to descend from ancestors in ancient Argos even though they are of a "dark race" (''melanthes... genos''). Pelasgus admits that the land was once called Apia but compares them to the women of Libya and Egypt and wants to know how they can be from Argos on which they cite descent from Io.

According to Strabo, Aeschylus's ''Suppliants'' defines the original homeland of the Pelasgians as the region around Mycenae.

Sophocles and Euripides

Sophocles and Euripides affirm the Greek origins of the Pelasgians while highlighting their relationship to the Danaids, a relationship introduced and explored in depth in Aeschylus's '' Suppliants''.

Sophocles presents Inachus, in a fragment of a missing play entitled ''Inachus'', as the elder in the lands of Argos, the Heran hills and among the Tyrsenoi Pelasgoi, an unusual hyphenated noun construction, "Tyrsenians-Pelasgians". Interpretation is open, even though translators typically make a decision, but Tyrsenians may well be the ethnonym ''Tyrrhenoi''.

Euripides uses the term for the inhabitants of Argos in his ''Orestes'' and ''The Phoenician Women''. In a lost play entitled ''Archelaus'', he says that Danaus, on coming to reside in the city of Inachus (Argos), formulated a law whereby the Pelasgians were now to be called Danaans.

Ovid

The Roman poet Ovid describes the Greeks of the Trojan War as Pelasgians in his ''Metamorphoses'':

Historians

Hecataeus of Miletus

Hecataeus of Miletus in a fragment from ''Genealogiai'' states that the ''genos'' ("clan") descending from Deucalion ruled Thessaly and that it was called "Pelasgia" from king Pelasgus. A second fragment states that Pelasgus was the son of Zeus and Niobe and that his son Lycaon founded a dynasty of kings of Arcadia.

Acusilaus

A fragment from the writings of Acusilaus asserts that the Peloponnesians were called "Pelasgians" after Pelasgus, a son of Zeus and Niobe.

Hellanicus

Hellanicus of Lesbos concerns himself with one word in one line of the ''Iliad'', "pasture-land of horses", applied to Argos in the Peloponnesus. According to Hellanicus, from Pelasgus and his wife Menippe came a line of kings: Phrastōr, Amyntōr, Teutamides and Nanas (kings of Pelasgiotis in Thessaly). During Nanas's reign, the Pelasgians were driven out by the Greeks and departed for Italy. They landed at the mouth of the Po River, near the Etruscan city of Spina, then took the inland city "Crotona" (''Κρότωνα''), and from there colonized Tyrrhenia. The inference is that Hellanicus believed the Pelasgians of Thessaly (and indirectly of the Peloponnese) to have been the ancestors of the Etruscans.

Herodotus

In the ''Histories'', the Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus made many references to the Pelasgians. In Book 1, the Pelasgians are mentioned within the context of Croesus seeking to learn who the strongest Greeks were to befriend them. Afterwards, Herodotus ambivalently classified the Pelasgian language as "barbarian" though he thought of the Pelasgians to have been essentially Greek. Herodotus also discussed various areas inhabited (or previously inhabited) by Pelasgians/Pelasgian-speakers along with their different neighbors/co-residents:

Furthermore, Herodotus discussed the relationship between the Pelasgians and the (other) Greeks, which, according to Pericles Georges, reflected the Specifically, Herodotus stated that the Hellenes separated from the Pelasgians with the former group surpassing the latter group numerically:

In Book 2, Herodotus alluded to the Pelasgians as inhabitants of Samothrace, an island located just north of Troy, before coming to Attica. Moreover, Herodotus wrote that the Pelasgians simply called their gods ''theoi'' prior to naming them on the grounds that the gods established all affairs in their order (''thentes''); the author also stated that the gods of the Pelasgians were the Cabeiri. Later, Herodotus stated that the entire territory of Greece (i.e., ''Hellas'') was initially called "Pelasgia".

In Book 5, Herodotus mentioned the Pelasgians as inhabitants of the islands of Lemnos and Imbros.

In Book 6, the Pelasgians of Lemnos were originally Hellespontine Pelasgians who had been living in Athens but whom the Athenians resettled on Lemnos and then found it necessary to reconquer the island. This expulsion of (non-Athenian) Pelasgians from Athens may reflect, according to the historian Robert Buck, . Also, Herodotus wrote that the Pelasgians on the island of Lemnos opposite Troy once kidnapped the Hellenic women of Athens for wives, but the Athenian wives created a crisis by teaching their children instead of the Pelasgian.

In Book 7, Herodotus mentioned and wrote about the Ionian inhabitants of (i.e., northwestern Peloponnese) being ; afterwards, they were called ''Ionians''. Moreover, Herodotus mentioned that the Aegean islanders and that the Aeolians, according to the Hellenes, were known anciently as "Pelasgians."

In Book 8, Herodotus mentioned that the Pelasgians of Athens were previously called ''Cranai''.

Thucydides

In the ''History of the Peloponnesian War'', the Greek historian Thucydides wrote about the Pelasgians stating that:

The author regards the Athenians as having lived in scattered independent settlements in Attica; but at some time after Theseus, they changed residence to Athens, which was already populated. A plot of land below the Acropolis was called "Pelasgian" and was regarded as cursed, but the Athenians settled there anyway.

In connection with the campaign against Amphipolis, Thucydides mentions that several settlements on the promontory of Actē were home to:

Ephorus

The historian Ephorus, building on a fragment from Hesiod that attests to a tradition of an aboriginal Pelasgian people in Arcadia, developed a theory of the Pelasgians as a people living a (''stratiōtikon bion'') , meaning "all of Hellas". They colonized Crete and extended their rule over Epirus, Thessaly and by implication over wherever else the ancient authors said they were, beginning with Homer. The Peloponnese was called "Pelasgia".Strabo. ''Geography''
5.2.4

Dionysius of Halicarnassus

In the ''Roman Antiquities'', Dionysius of Halicarnassus in several pages gives a synoptic interpretation of the Pelasgians based on the sources available to him then, concluding that Pelasgians were Greek:Dionysius of Halicarnassus. ''Roman Antiquities''
1.17

He goes on to add that the nation wandered a great deal. They were originally natives of "Achaean Argos" descended from Pelasgus, the son of Zeus and Niobe. They migrated from there to Haemonia (later called Thessaly), where they and divided the country into Phthiotis, Achaia, and Pelasgiotis, named after Achaeus, Phthius and Pelasgus, Subsequently, .

From there, the Pelasgians dispersed to Crete, the Cyclades, Histaeotis, Boeotia, Phocis, Euboea, the coast along the Hellespont and the islands, especially Lesbos, which had been colonized by Macar son of Crinacus.Dionysius of Halicarnassus. ''Roman Antiquities''
1.18
Most went to Dodona and eventually being driven from there to Italy (then called Saturnia), they landed at Spina at the mouth of the Po River. Still others crossed the Apennine Mountains to Umbria and being driven from there went to the country of the Aborigines where they consented to a treaty and settled at Velia.Dionysius of Halicarnassus. ''Roman Antiquities''
1.19
They and the Aborigenes took over Umbria but were dispossessed by the Tyrrhenians. The author then continues to detail the tribulations of the Pelasgians and then goes on to the Tyrrhenians, whom he is careful to distinguish from the Pelasgians.

Geographers

Pausanias

In his ''Description of Greece'', Pausanias mentions the Arcadians who state that Pelasgus (along with his followers) was the first inhabitant of their land. Upon becoming king, Pelasgus invented huts, sheep-skin coats, and a diet consisting of acorns while governing the land named after him, "Pelasgia". When Arcas became king, Pelasgia was renamed " Arcadia" and its inhabitants (the Pelasgians) were renamed "Arcadians". Pausanias also mentions the Pelasgians as responsible for creating a wooden image of Orpheus in a sanctuary of Demeter at Therae, as well as expelling the Minyans and Lacedaemonians from Lemnos.

Strabo

Strabo dedicates a section of his ''Geography'' to the Pelasgians, relating both his own opinions and those of prior writers. He begins by stating:

He defines Pelasgian Argos as being and states that it took its name from Pelasgian rule. He includes also the tribes of Epirus as Pelasgians (based on the opinions of "many"). Lesbos is named Pelasgian. Caere was settled by Pelasgians from Thessaly, who called it by its former name, "Agylla". Pelasgians also settled around the mouth of the Tiber River in Italy at Pyrgi and a few other settlements under a king, Maleos.

Language

In the absence of certain knowledge about the identity (or identities) of the Pelasgians, various theories have been proposed. Some of the more prevalent theories supported by scholarship are presented below. Since Greek is classified as an Indo-European language, the major question of concern is whether Pelasgian was an Indo-European language.

Reception

The theory that Pelasgian was an Indo-European language, which "fascinated scholars" and concentrated research during the second part of the 20th century, has since been critiqued; an emerging consensus among modern linguists is that the substrate language spoken in the southern Balkans was non-Indo-European. García-Ramón remarked that , while Beekes (2018) notes that , concluding that However, Biliana Mihaylova finds no contradiction between and given certain Pre-Greek words possessing Indo-European

Pelasgian as Indo-European

Greek

Edward Bulwer-Lytton argued that the Pelasgians spoke Greek based on the fact that areas traditionally inhabited by the "Pelasgi" (i.e. Arcadia and Attica) only spoke Greek and the few surviving Pelasgian words and inscriptions (i.e., Lamina Borgiana, Herodotus 2.52.1) betray Greek linguistic features despite the classical identification of Pelasgian as a barbarian language. According to Thomas Harrison of Saint Andrews University, the Greek etymology of Pelasgian terms mentioned in Herodotus such as ''θεοί'' (derived from ''θέντες'') indicates that the . According to French classical scholar Pierre Henri Larcher, if this linguistic affiliation is true, then it proves that the Pelasgians and the Greeks were the same people.

Anatolian

In western Anatolia, many toponyms with a "-ss-" suffix derive from the adjectival suffix also seen in cuneiform Luwian and some Palaic; the classic example is Bronze Age Tarhuntassa (loosely meaning "City of the Storm God Tarhunta"), and later Parnassus possibly related to the Luwian word ''parna-'' or "house". These elements have led to a second theory that Pelasgian was to some degree an Anatolian language, or that it had areal influences from Anatolian languages.

Thracian

Vladimir I. Georgiev, a Bulgarian linguist, asserted that the Pelasgians spoke an Indo-European language and were, more specifically, related to the Thracians.

Albanian

In 1854, an Austrian diplomat and Albanian language specialist, Johann Georg von Hahn, identified the Pelasgian language with Proto-Albanian. This theory is not supported by any scientific evidence, and is seen as a myth by modern scholars.

Undiscovered Indo-European

Albert Joris Van Windekens (1915–1989) offered rules for an unattested hypothetical Indo-European Pelasgian language, selecting vocabulary for which there was no Greek etymology among the names of places, heroes, animals, plants, garments, artifacts and social organization. His 1952 essay ''Le Pélasgique'' was skeptically received.

Pelasgian as pre-Indo-European

Unknown origin

One theory uses the name "Pelasgian" to describe the inhabitants of the lands around the Aegean Sea before the arrival of Proto-Greek speakers, as well as traditionally identified enclaves of descendants that still existed in classical Greece. The theory derives from the original concepts of the philologist Paul Kretschmer, whose views prevailed throughout the first half of the 20th century and are still given some credibility today.

Though Wilamowitz-Moellendorff wrote them off as mythical, the results of archaeological excavations at Çatalhöyük by James Mellaart and Fritz Schachermeyr led them to conclude that the Pelasgians had migrated from Asia Minor to the Aegean basin in the 4th millennium BC. In this theory, a number of possible non-Indo-European linguistic and cultural features are attributed to the Pelasgians:
* Groups of apparently non-Indo-European loan words in the Greek language, borrowed in its prehistoric development.
* Non-Greek and possibly non-Indo-European roots for many Greek toponyms in the region, containing the consonantal strings "-nth-" (e.g.,Corinth, Probalinthos, Zakynthos, Amarynthos), or its equivalent "-ns-" (e.g.,Tiryns); "-tt-", e.g.,in the peninsula of Attica, Mounts Hymettus and Brilettus/Brilessus, Lycabettus Hill, the deme of Gargettus, etc.; or its equivalent "-ss-": Larissa, Mount Parnassus, the river names Kephissos and Ilissos, the Cretan cities of Amnis(s)os and Tylissos etc. These strings also appear in other non-Greek, presumably substratally inherited nouns such as ''asáminthos'' (bathtub), ''ápsinthos'' ( absinth), ''terébinthos'' (terebinth), etc. Other placenames with no apparent Indo-European etymology include ''Athēnai'' (Athens), ''Mykēnai'' (Mycene), Messēnē, ''Kyllēnē'' ( Cyllene), Cyrene, Mytilene, etc. (note the common -ēnai/ēnē ending); also Thebes, Delphi, Lindos, Rhamnus, and others.
* Non-Greek inscriptions in the Mediterranean, such as the Lemnos stele.

The historian George Grote summarizes the theory as follows:

The poet and mythologist Robert Graves asserts that certain elements of that mythology originate with the native Pelasgian people (namely the parts related to his concept of the White Goddess, an archetypical Earth Goddess) drawing additional support for his conclusion from his interpretations of other ancient literature: Irish, Welsh, Greek, Biblical, Gnostic, and medieval writings.

Minoan

According to Russian scholar Yu. D. Andreyev, the Pelasgians may have been related to the Minoans. A number of scholars consider Minoan to be essentially the same language as Pelasgian.

Ibero-Caucasian

Some Georgian scholars (including R. V. Gordeziani, M. G. Abdushelishvili and Z. Gamsakhurdia) connect the Pelasgians with the Ibero-Caucasian peoples of the prehistoric Caucasus, known to the Greeks as Colchians and Iberians. According to Stephen F. Jones, these scholars portray Georgia as a source of spirituality in the Greek world by .

Archaeology

Attica

During the early 20th century, archaeological excavations conducted by the Italian Archaeological School and by the American Classical School on the Athenian Acropolis and on other sites within Attica revealed Neolithic dwellings, tools, pottery and skeletons from domesticated animals and fish. All of these discoveries showed significant resemblances to the Neolithic discoveries made on the Thessalian acropolises of Sesklo and Dimini. These discoveries help provide physical confirmation of the literary tradition that describes the Athenians as the descendants of the Pelasgians, who appear to descend continuously from the Neolithic inhabitants in Thessaly. Overall, the archaeological evidence indicates that the site of the Acropolis was inhabited by farmers as early as the 6th millennium BC.

The results on the prehistoric material of the American excavations near the Clepsydra have also been analyzed by Immerwahr, arguing (in contrast to Prokopiou) that no Dimini-type pottery was unearthed.

Lemnos

In August and September 1926, members of the Italian School of Archaeology conducted trial excavations on the island of Lemnos. A short account of their excavations appeared in the ''Messager d'Athènes'' for 3 January 1927. The overall purpose of the excavations was to shed light on the island's "Etrusco-Pelasgian" civilization. The excavations were conducted on the site of the city of Hephaisteia (i.e.,Palaiopolis) where the Pelasgians, according to Herodotus, surrendered to Miltiades of Athens. There, a necropolis () was discovered revealing bronze objects, pots, and more than 130 ossuaries. The ossuaries contained distinctly male and female funeral ornaments. Male ossuaries contained knives and axes whereas female ossuaries contained earrings, bronze pins, necklaces, gold diadems, and bracelets. The decorations on some of the gold objects contained spirals of Mycenean origin, but had no Geometric forms. According to their ornamentation, the pots discovered at the site were from the Geometric period. However, the pots also preserved spirals indicative of Mycenean art. The results of the excavations indicate that the Early Iron Age inhabitants of Lemnos could be a remnant of a Mycenaean population and, in addition, the earliest attested reference to Lemnos is the Mycenaean Greek ''ra-mi-ni-ja'', "Lemnian woman", written in Linear B syllabic script.

Boeotia

During the 1980s, the Skourta Plain Project identified Middle Helladic and Late Helladic sites on mountain summits near the plains of Skourta in Boeotia. These fortified mountain settlements were, according to tradition, inhabited by Pelasgians up until the end of the Bronze Age. Moreover, the location of the sites is an indication that the Pelasgian inhabitants sought to distinguish themselves "ethnically" (a fluid term) and economically from the Mycenaean Greeks who controlled the Skourta Plain..

See also

* Barbarian
* Dacians
* Etruscan civilization
* Falisci
* Illyrians
* Leleges
* Minyans
* Names of the Greeks
* Old European culture
* Paleo-Balkan languages
* Pelasgian creation myth
* Pre-Greek substrate
* Rûm
* Sea peoples
* Thracians
* Tyrrhenians

Notes

References

Citations

Sources

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* Dionysius of Halicarnassus. ''Roman Antiquities, Volume I: Books 1-2''. Translated by Earnest Cary. Loeb Classical Library No. 319. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1937
Online version by Bill ThayerOnline version at Harvard University Press

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{{Greece topics

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Hellenistic-era tribes in the Balkans
Cycladic civilization
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