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"This form of democracy," says Aristotle, "existed among the shepherds and husbandmen of Arcadia;" and was probably not uncommon with the ancient Pelasgians. But the myrioi of Arcadia had not the legislative power. "Then to the lute's soft voice prolong the night, Music, the banquet's most refined delight." Pope's Odyssey, book xxi., 473. It is stronger in the original
So then the Athenians were the first of the Hellenes who made the images of Hermes with the phallos, having learnt from the Pelasgians; and the Pelasgians told a sacred story about it, which is set forth in the mysteries in Samothrake.
What came before? What was the Fourth Sub-race? Well: I imagine we may have the relic, the sishta or seed of it, in the Hamitic peoples and languages: the Libyans, Numidians, Egyptians, Iberians, and Pelasgians of old; the Somalis, Gallas, Copts, Berbers, and Abyssinians of today. It seems to me then that we can almost get a glimpse of the sub-race preceding our own.
Lycosura was walled by the Pelasgians between four and five centuries prior to the introduction of the Cyclopean masonry in the building of the city of Tiryns. Sir William Gell maintains the possibility of tracing the walls of Lycosura near the place now called Surias To Kastro.
Ion, the son of Xuthus, is supposed to have led his followers from Thessaly to Attica, and to have conquered the Pelasgians, or effected peaceable settlements with them. Then follows a series of legends which have more poetical than historical interest, but which will be briefly noticed in the next chapter.
There were other far more civilized nations in those days. Among these were the E-gyp´tians, who lived in Africa. They had long known the use of fire, had good tools, and were much further advanced than the Pelasgians. They had learned not only to build houses, but to erect the most wonderful monuments in the world, the Pyr´a-mids, of which you have no doubt heard.
In the course of time the Hellenes, a more powerful Aryan race, overpowered them, and after that their country was called Hellas, and its people Hellenes, until a much later period, when they were known as Greeks. The Hellenes, like the ancient Pelasgians, had a system of religion which we call mythology.
To this tendency we owe the primitive-Italians or Aborigines who were immigrants from Greece, and the primitive- Greeks or Pelasgians whose wanderings brought them to Italy. The Earlier History
Now Homer knows Achaians, Argives, and Pelasgians dwelling in Peloponnesos; and he knows Dorians also, but only as a people inhabiting Crete. When these poems were written, Greece was not known as Hellas, but as Achaia, the whole country taking its name from the Achaians, the dominant race in Peloponnesos.
A rude tribe, according to all authority, of the vast and varied Pelasgic family, but essentially foreign to, and never amalgamated with, the indigenous Pelasgians of the Athenian soil, had in very remote times obtained a settlement in Attica. They had assisted the Athenians in the wall of their citadel, which confirmed, by its characteristic masonry, the general tradition of their Pelasgic race.
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