PELAS'GIANS, explained as denoting either "swarthy Asiatics" (Pal-Asia) or "storks" (pelargoi)—significative of wandering habits; or as being derived front the biblical peleg (Gen. x. 25), from the Greek pelagos (the sea), pelazo (to approach), or petts'm and a•ros (to till the field), etc.—" a name, in fact," as Niebuhr says, "odious to the historian, who hates the spurious philology on t of which the pretenses to knowledge on the subject of such extinct people arise"—designates a certain tribe or number of tribes who inhabited Italy, Thracia, Macedonia, a part of Asia Minor, and many other regions of southern Europe, in prehigtorie times. Ethnologically, they belong to the same race as the great stock of the earliest known settlers, that reached from the Po and the Arno to the Rhyndakus (near Kyzikus). Yet no Pelasgian town or village existing in Greece proper after 776 B.C., speculation has, ever since the commencement of European his toriography, been busy trying to supply the facts chat were wanting to ascertain the exact origin and history of these predecessors of the Hellenc3 and Romans; and so futile have all efforts in this direction remained, that the very term Pelasgi has, front the days of Homer to our own, been used almost arbitrarily to designate either a single °immix: •division of a tribe like the Leleges and the Dolopes, or as an equivalent for all the Greeks of a very early period. In this latter sense, they are spoken of by sEsehylus• lierodotus. Homer; while they are considered one of the branches of the race or races that peopled Greece., by Thneydides, Strabo, and most modern writers, the word thus not being a Comprehensive term, liks Aryan, but a narrowly circumscribed one, like Hindu. Recent investigation seems, as regards their previous history, to lead to the result, that soon after the first immigration of Turanians, they, like other tribes, left their Asiatic homes, And proceeded toward Europe. They are found 'at a very early period settled in Asia Minor; and Homer speaks of them as allies of the Trojans. They then seem to have spread themselves, by way of the Propontis and Zelg,ean, and again by Crete, over many of the islands between the two continents; and finally, came' to occupy a great part of the Hellenic main-land—Thcssaly, Epirus, the Peloponnese, Attica, Macedonia, Arcadia, provinces which, one and all, up to the latest period, bore distinct traces of the once undisputed sway of the Pclasglaus. According to Herodotus, the IleHelms themselves
sprang from them; and there can hardly be a doubt that they formed a most important element in the formation as well of that most gifted of nationalities, as of the Latin people. The early Etruscans (q.v.) were Pelasgians to a certain extent.; and the southern tribes of the Peucetians, CEnotrians, and Iapygians are distinctly declared by ancient writers to belong to their race. The Step from Greece into Italy is natural enough. What caused their wanderings originally is difficult to conjecture; but it may not unreasonably-be assumed that they were caused to a certain extent by immigrations of eastern tribes, such as the Lydians, Phrygians, Carians, who pushed them further and further west, as they took possession of their old homes. A special stock was formed by tile Tyrrhenian Pe/asgi, whose gradual advance in Greece may be traced from Acar nania to Bccotia, thence to Attica, and later still, to the Hellespont, Lemnos, etc. A. strong Protest; however, must be recorded here on the, part of some modern writers against the assumption of others, that the Pelasgians were in reality original popula tion of all Italy, as they were of the greatest part of Greece (Pelasgia). It is absurd, they argue, to suppose that a rich and populous nation, which had held a country like Italy for many centuries, should suddenly, just at the approach of historical times, die out without leaving even such single remnants as the Pelasgic settlements in Greece men tioned by Herodotus. These aboriginal Italian Pelasgians are, according to them, neither more nor less than a mere hypothesis of ignorant ancient writers, who wished to explain the ethnological and philological affinity between the two classical nations in an easy manner, and who, anticipating the questions about a contemporary colony, kill the whole nation off by pestilence and famine.