Pelasgi
（
Πελασγοί). A name given to the earliest (prehistoric)
inhabitants of Greece. In Homer the name applied now to a people in Asia Minor dwelling near
Ilium (
Il. ii. 840), and now to people inhabiting various parts of Greece.
Thus, Argos is called Pelasgian (id ii. 681), and the god worshipped at Dodona is the
“Pelasgian” Zeus (id. xvi. 233). Pelasgians are also spoken of as dwelling
in Crete (
Odyss. xix. 177). Herodotus tells us that the earliest name that
Greece bore was
Πελασγία, and ascribes a Pelasgic origin to
some of the Greek peoples, as the Arcadians, Athenians, Aeolians, etc. (cf.
Herod.i. 146;
vii. 94,
Herod., 95;
viii. 44). He draws a definite distinction
between the Pelasgi and the Hellenes proper, as being different in both race and language (i.
56, 58). Thucydides agrees with Herodotus, and goes a step further in identifying them with
the Tyrrheni. He also mentions them as found in the island of Lemnos, on which see the article
Etruria, p. 625.
Modern scholars, in general, regard the Pelasgi as a prehistoric people, probably non-Aryan
in their racial affinities, and possibly to be identified with the same branch as the
Etruscans, who came to Greece from Asia at a period earlier than that of the Indo-European
migration. Still others use the name as designating the Indo-Europeans before the time of
their separation into Greeks and Italians. To them are usually ascribed certain religious
cults, which are in their origin non-Hellenic, such as that of the
Cabeiri (q.v.) and of Zeus at Dodona; and also the architectural remains
popularly called Cyclopean. The ancient authorities on the subject of the Pelasgi are
collected by Bruck in his monograph
Quae Veteres de Pelasgis Tradiderunt
(1884). See also Eissner,
Die Alten Pelasger (Leipzig,
1825); Hesselmeyer,
Die Pelasgerfrage; Flor, Zur Geschichte
der Pelasger (1859); and the articles
Cyclopes;
Hellas;
Indo-European Languages;
Mycenae.
