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Updated: June 29, 2025
There is a land called Crete in the midst of the wine-dark sea, a fair land and a rich, begirt with water, and therein are many men innumerable, and ninety cities. And all have not the same speech, but there is confusion of tongues; there dwell Achaeans and there too Cretans of Crete, high of heart, and Cydonians there and Dorians of waving plumes and goodly Pelasgians.
The term Tyrrhenians denotes sometimes the Lydian Torrhebi as is the case in the earliest sources, such as the Homeric hymns; sometimes under the form Tyrrheno-Pelasgians or simply that of Tyrrhenians, the Pelasgian nation; sometimes, in fine, the Italian Etruscans, although the latter never came into lasting contact with the Pelasgians or Torrhebians, or were at all connected with them by common descent.
A great deal has been written, and with a vast amount of dogmatism, concerning the Pelasgians and their colonizations and conquests on the shore and over the islands of the Mediterranean Sea. But nothing can be proved with certainty in regard to their origin and manners, their rise and fall.
The descendants of Danaus long ruled over the land; and one member of his family, Per´seus, built the town of My-ce´næ on a spot where many of the Pelasgian stone walls can still be seen. The Pelasgians who joined this young hero helped him to build great walls all around his town.
A further proof that country life was earlier than that of town is found in the name of the town of Thebes, which was bestowed from the character of its situation rather than from the name of its founder: for in the ancient language, and among the Aeolians who had their origin in Boeotia, a small hill is called tebas without the aspirate; and in the Sabine country, where Pelasgians from Greece settled, they still have the same locution: witness that hill called Tebae which stands in the Sabine country on the via Salaria not far from the mile stone of Reate.
STONE OF FOUNDATION. A very important symbol in the masonic system. It is like the word, the symbol of divine truth. STONE WORSHIP. A very early form of fetichism. The Pelasgians are supposed to have given to their statues of the gods the general form of cubical stones, whence in Hellenic times came the Hermae, or images of Hermes.
The Greek method of naming ancestors is simple and obvious: the sons of Hellen are Dorus, Xuthus, Æolus; the sons of Xuthus are Achæus and Ion; and these are all descended from Deucalion. In like manner the Pelasgians are carried back to the ancestor Pelasgus, and the Peloponnesians to Pelops. The Roman Romulus, Remulus, Remus, are natural inventions based on the name of the city.
The rough, strong races from the north menace, and at last rudely dominate more highly civilized but less hardy races at the South, to the ultimate benefit of both, although with much present discomfort to the conquered race! In Greece it was first the rude Hellenes who overran the Pelasgians.
And you must read about his slaying the Minotaur in Crete, and about the beautiful Ariadne who fell in love with him, and gave him the clue to the labyrinth where her father, Minos, kept the monster hid. These things about the classic little island have an especial interest for us now. At this earliest period the people were called, not Greeks, but Pelasgians.
Advancing thus carefully, the Egyptians and Phoenicians finally came to Greece, where they made settlements, and began to teach the Pelasgians many useful and important things. The first Egyptian who thus settled in Greece was a prince called In´a-chus. Landing in that country, which has a most delightful climate, he taught the Pelasgians how to make fire and how to cook their meat.
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