LELEG ES. The history of this people is involved in great obscu rity, in consequence of the various and almost contradictory traditions which exist concerning them ; according to which, they are on the one hand represented as among the earliest inhabitants of Greece, while on the other they are said to be the same people as the Corinne. They were probably, as Strabo considers them, n mixed race widely diffused. According to Ilerodotus, the Carians, who originally inhabited the islands of the /Egean Sea, were known by the name of Leleges before they emigrated to Asia Minor (L 171); and according to Pautianiae, the Leleges formed only a part of the Carlon nation (vii. 2, § 4). The Leleges appear, from numerous traditions, to have inhabited the islands of the "Egean Sea and the western coasts of Asia Minor from a very early period. In Homer they are represented as the allies of the Trojans, who inhabited a town called I'edasus, at the foot of Mount Ida ; and their king, Altes, is said to be the father-in-law of Priam.
xx. 96 ; xxi. S6.) They are said to have founded the temple of Hem in Samos (Athen. ay., p. 672, Casaubon); and Strabo informs us that they once inhabited, together with the Carians, the whole of Ionia (vii. p. 331).
On the other hand, in the numerous traditions respecting them in the north of Greece, we find no connection between them and the Carians. According to Aristotle (quoted by Strabo, vii. p. 322), they inhabited parts of Ammonia, AT:tolia, Opuntian Locris, Leucas, and Bceotia. In the south of Greece we again meet with the same con fusion in the traditions of Megara respecting the Leleges and Carians. Car is said to have been one of the most ancient kings of Megara, and to have been succeeded in the royal power after the lapse of twelve generations, by Lelex, a foreigner from Egypt. (Paul., i. 39, § 4, 5.) Pylus, the grandson of this Lelex, is said to have led a colony of 3legarian Leleges into Messenia, where he founded the city of Pylus.
(Pans., iv. 36, § 1.) The Laced:erne/lien on the contrary, represent the Leleges as the original inhabitants of Laconica. (Taus., iii. 1, § I.) It can scarcely be doubted, from the numerous traditions ou the subject, that the Leleges were in some manner closely connected with the Camins; though it seems improbable that they were, according to Herodotits, the same people. The Carians are universally represented as a people of Asiatic origin ; while the principal and apparently earliest settlements of the Leleges were on the continent of Greece. With the single exception of the Megarian tradition mentioned above, the Leleges are nowhere represented as foreign settlers. If we might venture to form an opinion upon such a doubtful subject, we should be disposed to regard the Leleges as n people of Pelasgian race, a portion of whom emigrated, at a very early period, from the continent of ()mese to the islands of the tEgmn Sea, where they becaine connected with the Carinna, and subsequently joined them in their descent upon Asia Minor.
(Kruee'a Msllas Wachinnutlia Historical Antiquities of the Greeks ; Thirlwall's history of Greece ; Philological Museum, No. 1, art. " Ancasue") LEMMA ()Seam, literally "a thing taken or assumed "), a preparatory proposition borrowed from another subject, or from another part of the same subject, and introduced at the point st which it becomes indispensable. Thus, if in a treatise on mechanics it become necessary to prove certain propositions of geometry, those propositions are lemmas. Many writers use the term as if it applied to any necessary preliminary preposition : thus the seventh of the first book of Euclid is with them a lemma to the eighth. But this destroys the peculiar and ancient signification of the term, which it is desirable to retain, or else to avoid the word altogether.