The Pelasgians, from what we can glean about theta, would appear to have been a highly intellectual, receptive, active, and stirring people, of simple habits withal, chiefly intent upon agricultural pursuits. Several improvements in this province were distinctly traced back to them, such as the plowing with oxen—for which purpose they had to invent the special goad; further, the art of surveying, and the like. Yet they were no less warlike when attacked and driven to self-defense; and the trumpet, which calls the widely scattered troops to the attack, was supposed to have been first used by them. That the art of navigation was well known to them is shown sufficiently by their inces sant migrations over sea and land. Of their architecture, in that style which, in default of a better name, has been called Cyclopean (q.v.), remnants are still existing. Tho names Larissa, Argos, Ephyra, frequently met in ancient Greece, were bestowed by them upon their fortified cities, and are only generic names, expressive of either moun tain fortresses or strongholds in plains. Wishing to remain in peace, they to keep off the invader by walls so enormously strong that it really seems most surprising luny' they ever could have been taken. Besides these, they built canals, darns, and sub terranean water-works of astounding strength and most skillful construction. The tomb or treasury of Atreus at Mycenpe was vaulted with a fine pointed "horizontal arch," 48i- ft. in diameter. Of their sculpture, which they no doubt likewise cultivated to a certain degree, we'have but very small relics, such as a head of Medusa, and a Xoanon, (divine image) of Orpheus; besides these, certain traces of their special mystic worship are to be found in archaic representations, which, though not hitherto ascribed to them, hear their direct influence upon their very face. How far they were either the inventors of the so-called Cadmeau or Phenician writing-characters, from which all European characters are derived, or merely their "improvers," is not to be decided by the contra dictory evidence to be found on the subject: but this, at all events, is certain, that they were acquainted with the art of writing, and had thus a vast element of culture in their possession before the dawn of history. Respecting their religion and worship, there is this only to be held with certainty, that it originally consisted in a mystic service of those natural powers, whose influence is chiefly visible in the growth of the fruits of the earth. From Egypt they obtained names for their till then nameless gods, generally' called by them the Theoi; and they proceeded—by permission of the Dodonie oracle, which, together with the Pythian, they first founded—to bestow them upon then: indi vidually. Their deities were, besides the Phenician Kabiri, Demeter, Persephcne Kora, Dionysos, Hermes, Zeus of Dodona, Apollo, Hephxstus, Themis, Pan, etc. Whether th6se Pelasgians who inhabited Lemnos and Imbros, and who were conquered by Darius, offered up human sacrifices or not, is dqubtful. An ambiguous tern: of lierodotus
respecting the language of those small Pelasgian remnants who had survived to his day, has given rise to endless and most unsatisfactory discussions.- He speaks (I. fi7) of their " barbarous language;" and the question is, whether he meant that it completely-differed from Greek, or that there was only so vast a divergence of dialect, that it had becowe unintelligible to his contemporaries. Grote inclines to the former opinion; Niebuhr, Tbirlwall, T. 0. Muller, followed by G. Rawlinson and others, hold, with more apparent show of reason, that the term "barbarous language" merely a corruption or alteration of idiom, such as a long lapse of time would infallibly produce, and that it bore the same relation to the Greek of the day as the Gothic does to the German, or the Latin to any of the Romance languages, not to instance the forlorn patois of out-of-the way places in Switzerland and elsewhere, supposed to be inhabited by unmixed descend ants from Roman legions. That other phenomenon of the vast number of roots com mon both to Greek and Latin—the latter, it must be remembered, having been proved to be derived, not from the former, but from the Oscan—would thus easily be explained by the assumption of a common Pelasgian linguistic (as well as ethnical) stock in both nationalities.
Their political circumstances are as unknown to us as the whole process of transition between them and the real Greek period. From a few scattered allusions, we may con clude that they were not uniformly governed; that some of their multifarious tribes were ruled by priests, while others stood under the patriarchal rule of the head of the clan or family.
flow they gradually disappeared from the rank of nations, by being either "absorbed" by superior races (11ellenes, hand, Carians, Lydians, Phrygians), or being reduced to nameless serf-populations, does not seem so difficult to understand as some writers would have it. Hundreds of nations have disappeared in the same manner, and we may even watch the process with our own eyes. Interesting as it might be to dwell more minutely on some of the widely divergent theories and speculations upon the Pelasgians on the part of historians, philologists; ethnologists, antiquaries, and investigators generally, to whom, at all times, this people proved exceedingly attractive, we cannot enter any further upon them here, but we shall conclude with Grote's dictum: "lf any man is inclined to call the unknown ante-Hellenic period of Greece by the name of Pelasgic, it is open to him to do so. But this is a name carrying with it no assured predicates, no way enlarging our insight into real history, nor enabling us to explain.what would he the real historical problem—how, or from whom, the Hellenes acquired that stock of dispositions, aptitudes, arts; etc., with which they begin their career."