limits it entirely to a certain season, never was at sea except crossing from Aulis to Eubœa, and considers the whole business of going to sea one that had better be avoided[239].

That with Homer the fabulous element enters into his view of the Egyptians seems plain, from his calling them the race of Paieon, in the same way as he calls the Phæacians the race of Neptune: and in some degree also from the place which he gives them in the wanderings of Menelaus, since they lay, like those of Ulysses, in the exterior and unascertained sphere of geography.

Proteus is called Αἰγύπτιος, but in all probability the meaning is Proteus of the Nile, which is the proper Αἴγυπτος in the masculine gender; while the country, derivatively called from it as the γῆ Αἴγυπτος, takes the feminine. We shall hereafter see how Proteus belongs to the circle of nautical and therefore Phœnician tradition[240]. That deity has upon him all the marks of the outer and non-Grecian world. He is no less an admirable type of the πρωκτής, than a regular servant of Neptune, Ποσειδάωνος ὑποδμώς (Od. iv. 386). This connection with Neptune by no means makes him Greek: Neptune was the god of the θάλασσα, which extended beyond the circle of Greek experience, even to the borders of Ocean. We see set upon the whole of this adventure the same singular religious token as upon the remote adventures of Ulysses, namely this, that Menelaus passes beyond the ordinary charge of the Hellenic deities. The means of deliverance are pointed out to him, not by Minerva, but by Eidothea, daughter of Proteus himself, whose name, function, and relationship alike remind us that it was Ino Leucothea, daughter of the Phœnician Cadmus, who appeared to Ulysses for his deliverance, in a nearly similar border-zone of the marine territory lying between the world of fable and the world of experience; for the position of Egypt was in this respect like that of Phæacia. It would seem, then, as if Homer himself knew Egypt mainly through a Phœnician medium.

Of the Phœnician intercourse with that country we may safely rest assured, from their proximity, from their resort thither mentioned in Homer[241], and from the traces they left in Egypt itself.

It seems a probable conjecture that they had from a very early date a colony or factory in Egypt, by which they carried on their commerce with it. In the time of Herodotus, there was at Memphis a large and well-cared-for τέμενος or demesne of Proteus, whom the priests reported to be the successor of Sesostris on the Egyptian throne. This demesne was surrounded by the habitations of the ‘Tyrian Phœnices,’ and the whole plain in which it stood was called the Τυρίων στρατόπεδον. There is another tradition in Herodotus, according to which the Phœnicians furnished Egypt with the fleet, which in the time of Necho circumnavigated Africa[242].

Homer affords us little or no direct evidence of a connection between the religion of Greece and an Egyptian origin, to which Herodotus conceived it to be referable; but yet it may very well be the case, that Egypt was the fountain-head of many traditions which were carried by the Phœnicians into Greece. In Homer, for example, we find marks that seem to connect Dionysus with Phœnicia: but the Phœnicians may have become acquainted with him in Egypt, where Diodorus[243] reports that Osiris was held to be his original. There are two marks, however, of Egyptian influence, which seem to be more deeply traced. One is the extraordinary sacredness attached to the oxen of the Sun. The other, the apparent relation between the Egyptian Neith and the Athene of Attica, taken in conjunction with the Pelasgian character of the district[244]. But certainly our positive information from Homer respecting the Egyptians may be summed up in very brief compass. They would appear to have been peaceful, rich, and prosperous: highly skilled in agriculture, and also in medicine, if we are not rather to understand by this that they knew the use of opium, which might readily draw fervid eulogiums from a race not instructed in its properties. But the testimony to their agricultural excellence cannot be mistaken. Twice their fields are mentioned, and both times as περικάλλεες ἀγροί: in exact correspondence with the tradition which we find subsisting in Attica respecting those fields which were tilled by the Pelasgians[245]. And this case of the Egyptians is the only one throughout the Poems in which Homer bestows commendation upon tillage. Again, they fought bravely when attacked[246]. We find also the name Ægyptius naturalized in Ithaca. Lastly, they appear to have been hospitable to strangers, and placable to enemies[247]. This is a faint outline: but all its features appear to be in harmony with those of the Pelasgian race.

It is worthy of remark, that the Lotophagi visited by Ulysses correspond very much with the Egyptians, such as Homer conceived them. Locally, they belonged to the Egyptian quarter of the globe: they received the companions of Ulysses with kindness[248]; and they gave them to eat of the lotus, which appears in its essential and remarkable properties exactly to correspond with the νήπενθες[249] that Helen had obtained from Egypt. As every figure of the Phœnician traditions, except perhaps Æolus, is essentially either hard, or cruel, or deceitful, even so, whether on account of neighbourhood or otherwise, it seems to have been the poet’s intention to impress the less energetic but more kindly character of the Egyptians on this particular people, which perhaps he conceived to be allied to them.

There is indeed one suggestive passage of the Odyssey from which it is open to us to conjecture that there was more of substantive relation between Greece and Egypt than Homer’s purpose as a national poet led him fully to disclose. Menelaus, when he returns to Egypt after hearing from Proteus of the death of Agamemnon, raises in Egypt a mound in honour of his brother[250], ἵν’ ἄσβεστον κλέος εἴη. But this mound could not contribute to the glory of the slain king, unless Greece and its inhabitants were tolerably well known in Egypt.

Upon the whole, the evidence of the Homeric poems does not correspond with those later traditions which refer principally to Egypt as the origin of what is Greek. In considering this subject, we ought indeed to bear in mind Homer’s systematic silence as to the channels by which foreign influences found their way into Greece. For it throws us entirely upon such indirect evidence as he may (so to speak) involuntarily afford. And we must also recollect firstly that the Egyptian influence, whatever it may have been, may perhaps have operated more in the Pelasgian period, than in that Achæan age to which the representations of Homer belong. Secondly, that much may have reached Greece, as to religion or otherwise, in a Phœnician dress, which the Phœnicians themselves may have derived from Egypt.

There are other features, well known from all history to be Egyptian, though not traced for them by the hand of Homer, which tend strongly to confirm their relationship to the Pelasgian race, partly as it is delineated in the Homeric outlines, and partly as it is known from later tradition. One of these points is the comparatively hard and unimaginative character of its mythology, conforming to that of the race. It is interesting to notice how the Greeks, with their fine sense of beauty, got rid at once, in whatever they derived from Egypt, of the mythological deformities of gods incarnate in beasts, and threw them into the shapes of more graceful fable.

A second point of Pelasgian resemblance is the strong ritual and sacerdotal development of religion. A third is the want of the political energies which build and maintain extensive Empire. With all its wealth, and its early civilization, this opulent state could never make acquisitions beyond its own border, and has usually been in subordination to some more masculine Power. A fourth is, the early use of solid masonry in public edifices. The remains in Greece and Italy which are referred to the Pelasgians are indeed of much smaller dimensions than those of Egypt: but the Pelasgians of these countries, so far as we know, had not time to attain any higher political organization than that of small communities, with comparatively contracted means of commanding labour. A fifth is their wealth itself, which causes Egyptian Thebes to be celebrated both in the Iliad and in the Odyssey, perhaps the only case in which the poet has thus repeated himself, Il. ix. 381, and Od. iv. 126.

Lastly, the reputed derivation of the oracle at Dodona from Egypt harmonises with the Pelasgian character assigned to that seat of worship by Homer. The tradition to this effect reported by Herodotus[251] was Greek, and not Egyptian: it was obtained by him on the spot: and if Homer’s countrymen partook of the poet’s reserve, and his dislike of assigning a foreign source to anything established in Greece, a presumption arises that this particular statement would not have been made, had it not rested on a respectable course of traditionary authority.

It may however be asked, if the Pelasgians are to be regarded as Greeks, and as the base of the Greek nation, and if Homer was familiar with their name and position in that character, how happens it that he never calls the Greeks Pelasgians, as he calls them Danaans, Argeians, and Achæans, and never even gives us in the Iliad a Pelasgian race or tribe by name as numbered among the Greeks?

Now it is not a sufficient answer to say, that the Pelasgian race and name were falling under eclipse in the age of Homer; for we shall see reason hereafter to suppose that the appellations of Danaan and Argeian were likewise (so to speak) preterite, though not yet obsolete, appellations; still Homer employs them freely.

Their case is essentially different, however, as we shall find, from that of the Pelasgians, since those two names do not imply either any blood different from that of the Achæan or properly Greek body, or any particular race which had supplied an element in its composition: one of these the Pelasgian name certainly does imply. Those names too, without doubt, would not be used, unless they shed glory on the Greeks: the Pelasgian name could have no such treasure to dispense.

It should, however, here be observed, that an examination presently to be made of the force of the Argeian name will help us to account for the disappearance from Greece of the Pelasgian name, which it may perhaps have supplanted.

Let me observe, that if the Pelasgians did, in point of fact, supply an element to the Greek nationality, which had, while still remaining perceptibly distinct, become politically subordinate in Homer’s time, that is precisely the case in which he would be sure not to apply the name to the Greeks at large, nor to any Greek state, as its application could not under such circumstances be popular. His non-employment of it, therefore, for Greeks is pro tanto a confirmation to the general argument of these pages.

If, again, there were a distinct people of Pelasgians among the Trojan auxiliaries, and on the Greek side a large but subordinate Pelasgic element, this would be ample reason both for his naming the Pelasgic allies of the Trojans, with a view to the truth of his recital, and for his not using the Pelasgic name in connection with the Greeks; for in no instance has he placed branches of the same race or tribe on both sides in the struggle. Glaucus and Sarpedon, the transplanted Æolids, cannot be considered as exceptions, first, from the old date of their Greek extraction: and secondly, because they are individuals, whereas we now speak of tribes and races. The name, too, was more suited to the unmixed Pelasgians of the Trojan alliance, than to a people, among whom it had grown pale beneath the greater splendour of famous dynasties and of more energetic tribes.

The application of this reasoning to the Pelasgi is fortified by its being applicable to other Homeric names.

It can hardly be doubted that the name Θρῇξ is akin to Τραχὶν and τρῆχυς[252], that it means a highlander, or inhabitant of a rough and mountainous country, and that it included the inhabitants of territories clearly Greek. This extended signification of the term explains the assertion of Herodotus[253], that the Thracians were the most numerous of all nations, after the Indians.

Now Homer makes Thamyris the Bard a Thracian; yet it is clear from his having to do with the Muses, and from the geographical points with which Homer connects his name, that he must be a Greek[254]. They are, Δώριον in the dominions of Pylos, where he met his calamity, and the Œchalia of Eurytus in Thessaly, from whence he was making his journey[255]. Strabo tells us that Pieria and Olympus were anciently Thracian[256], and moreover, that the Thracians of Bœotia consecrated Helicon to the Muses. Orpheus, Musæus, Eumolpus, were held to be Thracians by tradition, yet it also made them write in Greek. I think we may trace this descriptive character of the name Θρῇκες, and its not yet having acquired fully the force of a proper name with Homer, in his employment of it as an adjective, and not a substantive. It is very frequently joined in the poems with the affix ἄνδρες, which he does not employ with such proper names as are in familiar and established use, such as Danaan, Argive, or Achæan. He says Achæan or Danaan heroes, but never joins the names to the simple predicate ‘men.’ When he says Ἀχαιὸς ἄνηρ, it is with a different force; it is in pointing out an individual among a multitude. Indeed in Homer it is not Θρῇξ but Θρηίκιος which means Thracian, of or belonging to the country called Thrace, Θρῄκη. There is then sufficient evidence that Greeks of the highlands might be Thraces; and there may very probably have been whole tribes so called among the Greeks. Yet we never have Thracians named by Homer on the Greek side, while on the Trojan side they appear as supplying no less than two contingents of allies: one in the Catalogue, and another which had just arrived at the period of the Δολώνεια[257].

These two appear to be entirely distinct tribes: because no connection is mentioned between them; because the first contingent is described as being composed not of all the Thracians, but of all the Thracians within the Hellespont: and lastly, because the new comers have their own βασιλεὺς with them, as the first contingent had its leaders, Acamas and Peirous. The Hellespont meant here seems to be the strait, because it is ἀγαρρόος. And it is therefore possible, that while the first contingent was supplied by the nearer tribes, the second may have been composed of those Thracians who lay nearer the Greek border.

Notwithstanding that Mars, who is so inseparably associated with Thrace, fights on the Trojan side, we have no evidence from Homer which would warrant the assumption that he intended to connect the Thracians more intimately with the Pelasgians than with the Hellenes. It may be that the poet’s ethnical knowledge failed him. The wavering of Mars seems to indicate a corresponding uncertainty in his own mind. Perhaps with both the Thracian and Pelasgian names it was the breadth of their range that constituted the difficulty. Some part of Thrace is with him ἐριβώλαξ[258]; it is the part from which the first contingent came, as the son of Peirous belonged to it. And that part is less mountainous than the quarter which I have presumed may have supplied the contingent of Rhesus. The epithet is the very same as is applied to the Pelasgian Larissa[259]: and the Larissan Pelasgians are placed next to the first Thracian contingent in the Trojan Catalogue.

The most probable supposition for Thracians as well as Pelasgians is, that they had affinities in both directions; that they existed among the Greeks diffusively, and were absorbed in names of greater splendour: but that on the Trojan side they still had distinct national existence, and therefore they are named on that side, while to avoid confusion silence is studiously maintained about them on the other. The whole race, says Grote, present a character more Asiatic than European[260].

Many other races have been recorded in the later traditions as having in pre-historic times inhabited various parts of Greece. Such are Temnices, Aones, Hyantes, Teleboi. Of these Homer makes no mention. But there are two other races whom he names, the Leleges and Caucones, and with respect to whom Strabo[261] has affirmed, that they were extensively diffused over Greece as well as over Asia Minor.

Homer has proceeded, with respect to the Caucones, exactly in the same way as with respect to the Pelasgi. In the Iliad he names them[262] among the Trojan allies, and is wholly silent about them in dealing with the Greek races. But in the Odyssey, where he had no national distinctions to keep in view, he names them as a people apparently Greek, and dwelling on the western side of Greece. The pseudo-Mentor is going among them on business, to obtain payment of a debt[263]: and the manner in which they are mentioned, without explanation, shows that the name must have been familiar to Nestor and the other persons addressed. Probably therefore they were a neighbouring tribe: certainly a Greek tribe, for we do not find proof that the Homeric Greeks carried on commerce except with their own race.

The poet names them with a laudatory epithet: they are the Καύκωνες μεγάθυμοι. This may remind us of his bounty in the same kind to the Pelasgians: and it seems as though he had had a reverence for the remains of the ancient possessors of the country.

We have abundant signs of the Leleges on the Trojan side in the war. In the Tenth Book they appear as a contingent: but besides this, Priam had for one of his wives Laothee, daughter of Altes, king of the Lelegians, who are here called φιλοπτόλεμοι[264]. What is more important, we find the expressions Λέλεγες καὶ Τρῶες[265] used together in such a way, as implies the wide extension of the former as a race. In the Twentieth Iliad, Æneas in speaking of Achilles refers to his former escape from the great warrior. He fought, says Æneas, under the auspices of Minerva: who shed light before him, and bid him slay Lelegians and Trojans,

The Trojan force was in two main portions, each with many subdivisions: first, the army of Priam, with those of his kindred or subordinate princes: and, secondly, the allies, with their numerous and widely dispersed races. In the passage just quoted, the word Leleges must either mean the great body of allies, or else it must, conjointly with Troes, signify the whole mass of what we may call the indigenous troops. Now the former is highly improbable. Such differences as are implied in the combination of Thracians, Lycians, and Pelasgians, could not well be, and nowhere else are comprehended by Homer under a single name as one race or nation, though the Lycians, on account of their excellence, are sometimes[266] taken to represent the whole body of the allies. And again, if the Leleges meant the whole body of allies, the Pelasgians would appear as a branch of them, which is contrary to all evidence and likelihood. If then the two words together represent those indigenous troops, as contradistinguished from the allies, who were arrayed in the five divisions that are enumerated in vv. 816-39 of the Second book, the question is, how is the sense to be distributed between them. And here there is not much room for doubt. The name Τρῶες had been assumed four generations before the war from King Tros, and was therefore a political or dynastic name, not a name of race. It most probably therefore indicates either the inhabitants of Priam’s own city and immediate dominions, or else the ruling race, who held power here, as elsewhere, among a subject population. In either case we must conclude that the word Leleges is meant to indicate the blood, and also the blood-name (so to speak) of the bulk of the population through a considerable tract of country: and it will be observed that in the fourth and fifth of the divisions[267] in the Trojan Catalogue Homer specifies no blood-name or name of race whatever.

This being so, we find an important light cast upon the meaning of the word Leleges. As we proceed with these inquiries, we shall find accumulating evidence of the Pelasgianism of the mass of the population on the Trojan side: and thus when it appears that that mass or a very great part of it was Lelegian, it also appears probable that the Leleges were at least akin to the Pelasgians, though some have taken them to be distinct[268].

In answer therefore to the question, who were these Caucones and these Leleges, while we are deficient in the means of detailed and particular reply, we may, I think, fall back with tolerable security upon the words used by Bishop Thirlwall in closing an ethnological survey:

“The review we have just taken of the Pelasgian settlements in Greece appears inevitably to lead to the conclusion that the name Pelasgians was a general one, like that of Saxons, Franks, or Alemanni: but that each of the Pelasgian tribes had also one peculiar to itself[269].”

Upon our finding, as we find, the Pelasgian name in certain apparent relations with others, such as Leleges and Caucones, it appears more reasonable to presume a relationship between them, than the reverse: for nothing can be more improbable than the simultaneous presence at that early period of a multitude of races, radically distinct from each other, and yet diffused intermixedly over the same country upon equal terms, and if there was a relationship, it would most probably be that of subdivision, under which Leleges and Caucones might be branches of the widely spread Pelasgian family.

This opinion is supported, not only by presumptions, but by much indirect evidence. It is indisputable that various names were applied, by the custom of the Homeric age, to the same people, and at the same period. The poet calls the inhabitants of Elis both Elians and Epeans. The people of Ithaca are Ithacesians (Ἰθακήσιοι), but there are also Ἀχαιοί[270], and in the Catalogue they are included under the Cephallenians[271]. The Dolopians in the speech of Phœnix[272] are included under the Phthians; and are also within the scope of the other names applied by the Catalogue to the followers of Achilles, who were called by the name of Myrmidons, or of Hellens, or of Achæans. Of these the first seems to be the denomination, which the ruling race of that particular district had brought with it into the country. The third probably belongs to the Myrmidons, as members of that tribe, of Hellic origin, which at the time predominated in Greece generally. The second, as we shall find, was the common name for all Greek tribes of that origin, and was the name which ultimately gained a complete ascendancy in the country. Of the five nations of Crete in the Seventeenth Odyssey[273], either all or several are probably included in the Κρῆτες of the Second Iliad[274]. Nay, we may now declare it to be at least highly probable[275], that the Ionian name was a sub-designation of the Pelasgians. Thus we have abundant instances of plurality in the designations of tribes. On the whole, we shall do best to assume that the names in question of Leleges and Caucones indicated Pelasgian subdivision. The inquiry is, however, one of ethnical antiquarianism only; these names are historically insignificant, for, apart from the Pelasgian, they carry no distinctive character or special function in reference to Greece.

SECT. III.
Pelasgians continued: and certain States naturalised or akin to Greece.

This appears to be the place for a more full consideration of the testimony of Homer with respect to, probably, the greatest character of early Greek history, and one who cannot be omitted in any inquiry concerning the early Pelasgians of Greece: in as much as they stand in a direct Homeric relation to Crete, of which he was the king.

In the poems of Homer, Minos appears to stand forth as the first great and fixed point of Greek nationality and civilization. He is not indeed so remote from the period of Homer himself as others, even as other Europeans, whom the poet mentions, and whom he connects by genealogy with the Trojan period, particularly the Æolids. But the peculiarities meeting in his case, as compared with most of them, are these:

1. That he is expressly traced upwards as well as downwards.

2. That he is connected with a fixed place as its sovereign.

3. That so much is either recounted or suggested of his character and acts.

4. That the Homeric traditions as to Minos are so remarkably supported from without.

Minos is mentioned, and somewhat largely, in no less than six different passages of the Iliad and Odyssey. Homer has given us a much fuller idea of him, than of the more popular hero Hercules, although he is not named in nearly so many passages; and it is singular, that the more ancient of the two personages is also by much the more historical. Again, the poet has told us more about Minos, although he is of foreign extraction, than he has said about all the rest of the older Greek heroes put together. Of Theseus, Pirithous, Castor, Pollux, Meleager, Perseus, Jason, and the rest, his notices are very few and meagre. In dealing with Homer, I should quote even this fact of the greater amount of his references, which in the case of most other poets would be immaterial, as a strong presumption of the superior historical importance of the person concerned.

Minos, according to Homer, had Jupiter for his father, a Phœnician damsel for his mother, and Rhadamanthus for his younger brother. The name[276] of his mother is not recorded, but Jupiter calls her far-famed. This fame, if due to her beauty, would probably have kept her name alive; but as it has not been preserved, it is more probably a reflection from the subsequent greatness of her son.

The story thus far appears probably to indicate that Minos was a Phœnician by birth, but without a known ancestry, and raised into celebrity by his own energies and achievements.

The mode, by which he rose to fame, was by the government of men and the foundation of civil institutions. At nine years old he received, such is the legend, revelations from Jupiter,[277] and reigned, in the great or mighty city (μεγάλη πόλις) of Cnossus, over Crete: such was the form, copied by the politic legislator of Rome, in which a title to veneration was secured for his laws. No other city, besides this capital, is described in Homer by the epithet μεγάλη, or by any equivalent word.

A further vivid mark of his political greatness is afforded us by that passage in the Odyssey, which exhibits him not simply as exercising in the world beneath[278] the mere office of a judge, but rather as discharging there a judicial function in virtue of his sovereignty. Such is the force of the word θεμιστεύειν,[279] which signifies rather to give law than to administer it: or, at least, to exercise the function of a king rather than of a judge[280] (ἵστωρ). He is described as still the illustrious son of Jupiter, Διὸς ἀγλαὸς υἱός. Even there he appears not as one of the suffering or bewildered inhabitants of that lower world, but in the exercise of power as an actual ruler among the spirits of the departed;

He only is invested with any character of this kind. Every other apparition below is either in actual suffering, or gloomy and depressed.

The epithet ὀλοόφρων, applied to Minos in an earlier passage of the Νεκυία, might perhaps convey the same idea as Virgil has rendered by his durissima regna,[281] in the description of Rhadamanthus: and we may also compare the address of Menelaus in the Third Iliad to Jupiter,

A reasonable construction would refer the word to the commercial character of the Phœnician people, at once cunning and daring[283]; and there is much probability in the opinion of Höck, who interprets the word as meaning ‘exactor of tribute,’ or as alluding to the exaction by Minos of a tribute from Attica[284]. On this we shall shortly have to enlarge.

As to the family and kingdom of Minos, we should gather in the first place from Homer, that Crete had under him been preeminent in power. He was king of the island (Κρήτῃ ἐπίουρος)[285], and he reigned, at the age of nine years only (ἐννέωρος βασίλευε), in Cnossus over the five nations. The island had ninety, or in the rounder numbers, an hundred cities. Two generations had passed since Minos; Idomeneus his grandson did not apparently reign, like Minos himself, over the whole of it: for if this had been the case, it is very improbable, presuming that we may judge by the analogies which the order of the army in general supplies, that Meriones would have been made his associate, which in some manner he is, in the command; and again, the feigned story of Ulysses in the Odyssey, though it introduces Idomeneus, does not represent him as king of the whole island, but rather implies that his pretended brother, Æthon, also exercised a sovereignty there[286]. But even then the Cretan contingent, although the towns named as supplying it do not extend over the whole island[287], amounted to eighty ships, and thus exceeded any other, except those of Agamemnon and of Nestor. And then, when Minos had so long been dead, it was still the marked and special distinction of the country, that it was the seat of his race. So Eumæus, describing the disguised stranger to Penelope, says[288],

A passage which perhaps testifies that the family of Minos had been ξεῖνοι to the predecessors of Ulysses.

But perhaps there is no country in Greece which Homer so rarely mentions without a laudatory epithet. Though (περίρρυτος) sea-girt, it is not with him an island: it is Κρήτη γαῖα, Κρήτη εὐρεῖα, Κρήτη ἑκατόμπολις[289], and in the principal description, Homer exalts it more highly, I think, than any other territory,

If it should be thought that the evidence to the character of Minos as a lawgiver is slight, we must call to mind that even the word law is not found in Homer. The term afterwards used by the Greeks to express what we mean by a law, νόμος, only occurs with Homer in a sense quite different. He tells us of nothing more determinate than δίκαι and θέμιστες. But relatively to his pictures of other governors, the legislatorial character of Minos is as strongly marked as that of Numa is in Livy, relatively to other kings of Rome.

In conclusion, as to the region of Crete, it was inhabited by five races: namely,

1. Ἀχαιοί.
2. Ἐτεοκρῆτες.
3. Κυδῶνες.
4. Δωριέες.
5. Πελάσγοι.

Of these the Achæans and Dorians are evidently Greek. We are now examining at large the title of the Pelasgi to the same character. With respect to the Cydones, we may draw an inference from the facts, that they lived (Od. iii. 292), on a Cretan river Iardanus, and that this was also the name of a river of Peloponnesus (Il. vii. 133). I should even hold that this stream, which is not identified, was most probably in Arcadia: first, because in the contest with the Hellic tribes of Pylos, the Arcadians as Pelasgians would be on the defensive, and would therefore fight on their own ground: secondly, because the battle was on the ὠκύροος Κελάδων. These words are most suitable to some mountain feeder of the Iardanus, with its precipitate descent, rather than to the usually more peaceful course of a river near the sea, especially near the sea coast of sandy Pylus, which reached to the Alpheus[291]. This supposition respecting the Celadon will also best account for what otherwise seems singular; namely, that the battle was at once on the Celadon, and also about the Iardanus (Ἰαρδάνου ἀμφὶ ῥεέθρα[292]). Again, the battle was between Arcadians and Pylians, and therefore, from the relative situation of the territories, was probably on some Arcadian feeder of the Alpheus, lying far inland. Now if Iardanus was an Arcadian river, and if the Arcadians were Pelasgi, it leads to a presumption that the Cydonians of Crete, who dwelt upon an Iardanus, were Pelasgian also.

There remain the Ἐτεοκρῆτες, apparently so called, to distinguish them as indigenous from all the other four nations, who were ἐπήλυδες, or immigrant. This is curious, because it refers us elsewhere for the origin of the Pelasgi. It is the only case in which we hear of any thing anterior to them, upon the soils which they occupied. Lastly, Crete lay between Greece and Cyprus, and Cyprus is clearly indicated in the Odyssey as on the route to Egypt[293].

But we hear also of Rhadamanthus as the brother of Minos, of Deucalion as his son, and of Ariadne as his daughter[294]. And the notices of these personages in Homer all tend to magnify our conception of his power and his connections.

Theseus, who is glorified by Nestor as a first rate hero[295], and described as a most famous child of the gods[296], whom both Homer, and also the later legends connect with Attica, marries Ariadne, who dies on her way to Athens[297]. The marriages of Homer were generally contracted among much nearer neighbours. This more distant connection cannot, I think, but be taken as indicating the extended relations connected with the sovereignty of Minos and his exalted position.