Athens: Its Rise and Fall | Page 5

the first settler in Attica, nor is it
reserved for my labours to decide the solemn controversy whether
Ogyges was the contemporary of Jacob or of Moses. Neither shall I
suffer myself to be seduced into any lengthened consideration of those
disputes, so curious and so inconclusive, relative to the origin of the
Pelasgi (according to Herodotus the earliest inhabitants of Attica),
which have vainly agitated the learned. It may amuse the antiquary to
weigh gravely the several doubts as to the derivation of their name
from Pelasgus or from Peleg--to connect the scattered fragments of
tradition--and to interpret either into history or mythology the language
of fabulous genealogies. But our subtlest hypotheses can erect only a
fabric of doubt, which, while it is tempting to assault, it is useless to
defend. All that it seems to me necessary to say of the Pelasgi is as
follows:--They are the earliest race which appear to have exercised a
dominant power in Greece. Their kings can be traced by tradition to a
time long prior to the recorded genealogy of any other tribe, and
Inachus, the father of the Pelasgian Phoroneus, is but another name for
the remotest era to which Grecian chronology can ascend [4]. Whether
the Pelasgi were anciently a foreign or a Grecian tribe, has been a
subject of constant and celebrated discussion. Herodotus, speaking of
some settlements held to be Pelaigic, and existing in his time, terms
their language "barbarous;" but Mueller, nor with argument insufficient,
considers that the expression of the historian would apply only to a
peculiar dialect; and the hypothesis is sustained by another passage in
Herodotus, in which he applies to certain Ionian dialects the same term
as that with which he stigmatizes the language of the Pelasgic

settlements. In corroboration of Mueller's opinion we may also observe,
that the "barbarous-tongued" is an epithet applied by Homer to the
Carians, and is rightly construed by the ancient critics as denoting a
dialect mingled and unpolished, certainly not foreign. Nor when the
Agamemnon of Sophocles upbraids Teucer with "his barbarous
tongue," [6] would any scholar suppose that Teucer is upbraided with
not speaking Greek; he is upbraided with speaking Greek inelegantly
and rudely. It is clear that they who continued with the least
adulteration a language in its earliest form, would seem to utter a
strange and unfamiliar jargon to ears accustomed to its more modern
construction. And, no doubt, could we meet with a tribe retaining the
English of the thirteenth century, the language of our ancestors would
be to most of us unintelligible, and seem to many of us foreign. But,
however the phrase of Herodotus be interpreted, it would still be
exceedingly doubtful whether the settlements he refers to were really
and originally Pelasgic, and still more doubtful whether, if Pelasgia
they had continued unalloyed and uncorrupted their ancestral language.
I do not, therefore, attach any importance to the expression of
Herodotus. I incline, on the contrary, to believe, with the more eminent
of English scholars, that the language of the Pelasgi contained at least
the elements of that which we acknowledge as the Greek;--and from
many arguments I select the following:
1st. Because, in the states which we know to have been peopled by the
Pelasgi (as Arcadia and Attica), and whence the population were not
expelled by new tribes, the language appears no less Greek than that of
those states from which the Pelasgi were the earliest driven. Had they
spoken a totally different tongue from later settlers, I conceive that
some unequivocal vestiges of the difference would have been visible
even to the historical times.
2dly. Because the Hellenes are described as few at first--their progress
is slow--they subdue, but they do not extirpate; in such conquests--the
conquests of the few settled among the many--the language of the many
continues to the last; that of the few would influence, enrich, or corrupt,
but never destroy it.

3dly. Because, whatever of the Grecian language pervades the Latin [7],
we can only ascribe to the Pelasgic colonizers of Italy. In this, all
ancient writers, Greek and Latin, are agreed. The few words transmitted
to us as Pelasgic betray the Grecian features, and the Lamina Borgiana
(now in the Borgian collection of Naples, and discovered in 1783) has
an inscription relative to the Siculi or Sicani, a people expelled from
their Italian settlements before any received date of the Trojan war, of
which the character is Pelasgic-- the language Greek.
IV. Of the moral state of the Pelasgi our accounts are imperfect and
contradictory. They were not a petty horde, but a vast race, doubtless
divided, like every migratory people, into numerous tribes, differing in
rank, in civilization [8], and in many peculiarities of character. The
Pelasgi in one country might appear as herdsmen