Greek Texts & Translations

Pelasgian, Dodonaean Jove supreme. ^note
Iliad xvi. 223. Many have likewise asserted that the nations of the Epirus are Pelasgic, because the dominions of the Pelasgi extended so far. And, as many of the heroes have been named Pelasgi, later writers have applied the same name to the nations over which they were the chiefs. Thus Lesbos ^note has been called Pelasgic, and Homer has called the people bordering on the Cilices in the Troad Pelasgic:— Hippothous from Larissa, for her soil
Far-famed, the spear-expert Pelasgians brought. ^note
Iliad ii. 840 Ephorus, when he supposes that they were a tribe of Arcadians, follows Hesiod, who says, The sons born of the divine Lycaon, whom formerly Pelasgus begot.
Likewise Aeschylus in his Suppliants, or Danaids, makes their race to be of Argos near Mycenae. Ephorus likewise says that Peloponnesus was named Pelasgia; and Euripides, in the Archelaus, says, Danaus, who was the father of fifty daughters, having arrived in Argos inhabited ^note the city of Inachus, and made a law that those who had before borne the name of Pelasgiotae throughout Greece should be called Danai. Anticlides says, that they first colonized about Lemnos and Imbros, and that some of their number passed into Italy with Tyrrhenus, the son of Atys. And the writers on the Athenian Antiquities, ^note relate of the Pelasgi, that some of them came to Athens, where, on account of their wanderings, and their settling like birds in any place where they chanced to come, they were called by the Athenians Pelargi. ^note 5

They say that the greatest length of Tyrrhenia, which is along the coast from Luna to Ostia, is about 2500 stadia; and that its breadth in the direction of the mountains is less than half that number. Then from Luna to Pisa there are more than 400 stadia; from thence to Volaterrae ^note 280; thence to Pop-