II. And perhaps this might explain how, having been at CHAP. first confined to some fortunate and industrious tribes, which cultivated the most fruitful tracts, it came to be widely diffused, without superseding those which prevailed elsewhere. But, as has been already observed, there is no necessity for supposing that all the Pelasgian tribes stood in this respect on the same level, and were equally favoured by nature and fortune. If some were attracted by the fertility of the broad plains, others might be tempted by the security of the mountain valleys, and thus Arcadia may have been peopled as early as Argos by the same race. And yet, unless the Arcadian settlers found their new seats prepared for their reception, the forests already cleared, the swamps drained, and those great works accomplished which were ascribed to the power of Hercules, or Poseidon, and without which many tracts could never have been habitable, they must have been long engaged in a struggle with nature, which would detain them in a condition very inferior to that of their Argive brethren. The legends of the two countries appear to indicate that such was the case. It would be an equally narrow view of the Pelasgians, to conceive that they were solely addicted to agricultural pursuits. Even if it were not highly probable, that a part of the nation crossed the sea to reach the shores of Greece, and thus brought with them the rudiments of the arts connected with navigation, it would be incredible that the tribes seated on the coast should not soon have acquired them. Accordingly, the islands of the Ægean are peopled by Pelasgians, the piracies of the Leleges precede the rise of the first maritime power among the Greeks, and the Tyrsenian Pelasgians are found infesting the seas after the fall of Troy. To know that a nation which has any fair claim to affinity with the Greeks was not, at any period to CHAP. II. which probable tradition goes back, a horde of helpless savages, is in itself not unimportant. The same evidence which disposes us to believe that the Pelasgians spoke a language nearly akin to the Hellenic, must render us willing to admit that, before they came into contact with any foreign people in Greece, they may have tilled the ground, planted the vine, launched their boats on the sea, dwelt together in walled towns, and honoured the gods, as authors of their blessings, with festive rites and sacred songs. And it is satisfactory to find that all this, if not clearly ascertained, is at least consistent with the general tenor of ancient tradition. But even this is far from giving us a notion of the precise point of civilisation to which the Pelasgians had advanced, before the Greeks overtook and outstripped them, and still less does it disclose any peculiar features in their national character. Fully to discuss the former of these subjects, it would be necessary to enter into a very wide and arduous field of inquiry, and to examine the pretensions set up on behalf of the Pelasgians to the art of writing, to religious mysteries, and to a theological literature. But as this would lead us away from our main object, it will be better to reserve these questions till we are called upon to notice them, so far as they bear on the progress of society among the Greeks. For the present we shall only touch on one subject, which affords us surer ground for observation, and perhaps the best measure for judging of the condition and character Monuments of the Pelasgians. Some of the most ancient archi of the Pelasgians. tectural monuments in Europe, which may perhaps outlast all that have been reared in later ages, clearly appear to have been works of their hands. The huge structures, remains of which are visible in many parts of Greece, in Epirus, Italy, and the western coast of Asia Minor, and which are commonly described by the epithet Cyclopean, because, according to the II. Greek legend, the Cyclopes built the walls of Tiryns CHAP. and Mycena, might more properly be called Pelasgian from their real authors. The legendary Cyclopes indeed are said to have been brought over from Lycia by Prœtus, king of Argos, the founder of Tiryns. But this tradition, whatever may have been its foundation, is certainly not a sufficient clue for tracing the style, as well as the name, to Argolis, nor a safe ground for ascribing its origin to a different race from the Pelasgians. The epithet most probably expresses nothing more than the wonder excited by these gigantic works in the Greeks of a more refined age. It suggests however the point of view from which they may reflect some light on the people to which they belong. The earliest of them are so rude, that they seem at first sight to indicate nothing more than a capacity confined to undertakings which demanded much toil and little skill, and a state of society settled enough to encourage such exertions. In this respect it matters little whether they were productions of free labour, or tasks imposed by a foreign master. The gradual progress that may be traced, through a series of easy transitions, from these shapeless masses to regular and well-contrived buildings, seems to show, that in those of the rudest workmanship, the sense of symmetry, the most distinguishing feature in the Greek character, was only suppressed in the struggle of an untaught people with the difficulties that beset the infancy of art. The interval between the style, if it may be so called, of the most unsightly Cyclopean wall, and that of edifices like the treasury or tomb of Strabo, viii. 373. Apollod. ii. 2. 1. 3. According to the Scholiast on Euripides, Orest. 953., auxiliaries came to Prœtus from Lycia and from Curetis (Ætolia), both tribes belonging to the same race of the Cyclopes, a people of Thracian origin, which had migrated to different regions, but settled in greatest numbers in Curetis: and these last, not the Lycians, fortified the Argolic cities. * See Kugler, Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte, p. 133. Bamberger, Ueber des Hesiodus Mythus von den Aeltesten Menschengeschlechtern, in Welcker and Ritschl's Rhein. Mus. i. p. 528., would explain Hesiod's xaλ d' eipyášovтo ( O. et D. 150.) as an allusion to these colossal remains of antiquity. CHAP. Atreus, is perhaps not so wide as that which separates works of the latter class from what may be conceived to have been the simplest form of the Doric temple; though they were much further removed from that stage, in which necessity is still the parent of invention, utility its only guide, beauty its unsought, and seemingly accidental, result. CHAP. CHAPTER III. FOREIGN SETTLERS IN GREECE. Authority of the Traditions concerning Foreign Settlers in of the traditions foreign Greece. In a comparatively late period, — that which followed Authority the rise of a historical literature among the Greeks, we find a belief generally prevalent, both in the people concerning and among the learned, that in ages of very remote settlers in antiquity, before the name and dominion of the Pelasgians had given way to that of the Hellenic race, foreigners had been led by various causes from distant lands to the shores of Greece, and there had planted colonies, founded dynasties, built cities, and introduced useful arts and social institutions, before unknown to the ruder natives. The same belief has been almost universally adopted by the learned of modern times, many of whom, regarding the general fact as sufficiently established, have busied themselves in discovering fresh traces of such migrations, or in investigating the effects produced by them on the moral and intellectual character, the religious or political condition, of the Greeks. It required no little boldness to venture even to throw out a doubt as to |