Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 29, 2025
The new Argos rose on the same place as the old; and the country around it, called Ar´go-lis, was separated from Boeotia and Attica only by a long narrow strip of land, which was known as the Isthmus of Cor´-inth. Danaus not only showed the Pelasgians all the useful arts which Cadmus and Cecrops had taught, but also helped them to build ships like that in which he had come to Greece.
Whosoever has been initiated in the mysteries of the Cabeiroi, which the Samothrakians perform having received them from the Pelasgians, that man knows the meaning of my speech; for these very Pelasgians who became dwellers with the Athenians used to dwell before that time in Samothrake, and from them the Samothrakians received their mysteries.
These observances then, and others besides these which I shall mention, the Hellenes have adopted from the Egyptians; but to make, as they do the images of Hermes with the phallos they have learnt not from the Egyptians but from the Pelasgians, the custom having been received by the Athenians first of all the Hellenes and from these by the rest; for just at the time when the Athenians were beginning to rank among the Hellenes, the Pelasgians became dwellers with them in their land, and from this very cause it was that they began to be counted as Hellenes.
Behind the Oriental legends which form the basis of Grecian mythology there was, in all probability, in those ancient times before the Pelasgians were known as Ionians and the Hellenes as Dorians, a mystical and indefinite idea of supreme power, as among the Persians, the Hindus, and the esoteric priests of Egypt.
The poor Pelasgians could not forget their terror and the sudden death of so many friends, and they often talked about that horrible time. Some time after Inachus had built Argos, another Egyptian prince came to settle in Greece. His name was Ce´crops, and, as he came to Greece after the Deluge of Ogyges, he found very few inhabitants left.
East of the Halys dwelt Semitic races, Assyrians, Syrians, Cappadocians, and Cilicians. Along the coast of the Euxine dwelt Bythinians, Marandynians, and Paphlagonians—branches of the Thracian race. Along the southern coast of the Propontis were the Doliones and Pelasgians. In the region of Mount Ida were the Teucrians and Mysians.
He landed, and decided to build a city on a promontory northeast of Argos. Then he invited all the Pelasgians who had not been drowned in the flood to join him. The Pelasgians, glad to find such a wise leader, gathered around him, and they soon learned to plow the fields and to sow wheat.
Many of the Pelasgians were thus drowned, while their terrified companions ran faster and faster up the mountain, nor stopped to rest until they were quite safe. Looking down upon the plains where they had once lived, they saw them all covered with water.
He also showed them how to build comfortable homes by piling up stones one on top of another, much in the same way as the farmer makes the stone walls around his fields. The Pelasgians were intelligent, although so uncivilized; and they soon learned to build these walls higher, in order to keep the wild beasts away from their homes.
They were divided into several tribes, of which the Hellenes were probably one: at any rate, this people, who originally dwelt in the south of Thessaly, gradually spread over the rest of Greece. The Pelasgians disappeared before them, or were incorporated with them, and their dialect became the language of Greece.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking