CHAP. II. Traditions of their with the arts of life. But if it were possible to treat it as containing any touch of historical truth, it would still be doubtful, whether the Pelasgians ought to be regarded as giving or receiving the benefits of civilised life; and we should be as little justified in inferring that they themselves emerged from a savage state, as in drawing the like conclusion from the Italian legend, which relates that Italus introduced husbandry among his subjects, the Enotrians.1 So too, when the Pelasgians of Attica are described as originally plunged in the grossest barbarism, there is strong reason to suspect that it has only been attributed to them for the sake of heightening the contrast between them and the foreign settlers, who in the same accounts are said to have reclaimed them.2 Other traditions, not so liable to distrust, concur in familiarity assigning tillage and useful arts to the Pelasgians, as their proper and original pursuits. We are told that they loved to settle on the rich soil of alluvial plains; hence the name and the legend of Piasus, who reigned over the Pelasgians in the valley of the Hermus, and grew wanton from the exuberant increase of the land.3 So, in Thessaly, the waters have no sooner been discharged by the earthquake which rent Ossa and Olympus asunder, than Pelasgus hastens to take possession of the newly discovered territory, and the happy event is celebrated in a yearly festival with loaded boards. The Powers that preside over husbandry, and protect the fruits of the earth, and the growth of the flocks and herds, appear to have been the eldest Pelasgian deities. It is therefore not an improbable conjecture, that the genuine and most ancient form of the national name was expressive of this character.5 Aristot. Pol. vii. 9. 3 Strabo, xiii. 621. 4 Eudocia, under the article Cecrops. 5 Πελαργοί (from ἄργος and πέλω) inhabitants or cultivators of the plain. Mueller (Orchom. p. 125. n. 6.) connects this with the name Peloria, the feast of the settlers. Yet the analogy of αἰπόλος, ταυροπόλος, &c. seems unfavourable to this etymology. And perhaps this might explain how, having been at 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 Egean 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. 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.2 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 1 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' eipɣášovтo ( 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. |