THE PELASGIAN RACES.
In the preceding section we have sketched the art of a group of races. How far this art and the culture founded upon it were spread, under their sway, beyond the limits within which we have viewed them, we cannot ascertain with certainty; still less can we tell how widely their indirect influence may have made itself felt through peaceful and warlike relations with other nations. In general, we may assert that its proper territory was enclosed by the Persian Gulf and the Caspian, Black, and Mediterranean seas, although in the beginning it did not occupy the whole of that terri tory. We have seen that the Phoenicians organized a world-wide com merce along the seacoasts from India to Great Britain, and thus doubtless carried among foreign peoples the products of this magnificent Asiatic civilization. Certainly this would have its influence; yet historic data as to how far this influence extended are entirely wanting.
We now come in contact with a group of inter-related tribes of Indo Germanic origin which are known by the common title of " Pelasgi." They settled in South-eastern Europe, descended to the Grecian penin sula, and spread over Asia Minor and Italy. It is not known when or by what route their migration occurred, but it may be presumed that it took place before the Asiatic peoples had attained their seats and their culture. We find them in Greece in the second thousand years before Christ, and to them very many of the Greek myths refer. In contrast to the great people's of Asia who were united into vast empires, we find these peoples settled in small tribes, each perhaps the increase of a single family, while each had one of its oldest members at its head, similar to a patriarch of Asia in former times, but called a king. Instead of wan dering like the patriarchal folk, they fixed their dwelling in a valley, upon a mountain, on some part of the seacoast, or upon an island. Their race-relationship formed an ideal bond, and they often united for common deeds or expeditions.
It matters little when Greek folk-lore had its origin, when it was brought into its present shape, or how much of it is due to a poetical imagination; we always find the Pelasgian races erecting for themselves permanent houses, manufacturing their own weapons, building cities with solid walls, and constructing ships in which to seek treasures in distant lands (as Jason sought the Golden Fleece) or to send out colonists to other localities. How far the Phoenicians were their teachers, how much they
learned from the Egyptians, and what they discovered for themselves is not known. From the siege of Troy, which lasted ten years, we may conclude, since Troy was only an outpost of the older Chaldreo-Assyrian culture, that, although their civilization in that age might not have been nearly related to the Asiatic, they must have been strongly impressed with the idea that it was superior to their own.
Pclasgian of such immensity as the Egyptians erected or such as we have met,with in Nineveh and Babylon could not be raised by these small communities. Since those powerful Asiatic peoples did not construct buildings composed throughout of substantial materials, it is not surprising that the Pelasgi, whose forests yielded an abundance of timber, should allow that material to play an important part in their architecture. Still, when they had need of monumental memorials, the Pelasgi even in that early time raised works at once so primitive and so massive that they seemed strange to the later Greeks, who regarded them as the works, not of men, but of giants.
City II and of these monumental works still exist, particularly the circumvallation walls of several cities. The oldest is probably that of Tiryns, which is 25 feet thick, and is con structed of huge irregular blocks, some of them more than 3 metres (nearly ro feet) long and rough as they came from the quarry. Corridors which are metres wide (nearly 5 feet) run lengthwise within this wall and are roofed with blocks which project on both sides. As the larger blocks, from the irregularity of their surfaces, could not be bedded upon one another with sufficient security, smaller irregular pieces were wedged in between, so as to form a safe bed and bond for the larger. These walls are called " Cyclopean." Somewhat later are the walls Of Agamemnon's city of Mykenze (j5/. 4, 12), as is proved by the masonry, which, though not regularly laid in courses, consists of polygonal blocks well bonded.