s time in Arcadia, after the Dorians had
expelled them from the rest of the Peloponnesus; says that the
Samothracians adopted the mysteries of the Kabiri from the Pelasgians;
that the Pelasgians sacrificed victims to unknown gods at Dodona, and
asked that oracle advice about what names they should give their gods.
These names, taken from Egypt, the Grecians received from them. Hellas was
formerly called Pelasgia. The Athenians expelled the Pelasgians from
Attica (whether justly or unjustly, Herodotus does not undertake to say),
where they were living under Mount Hymettus; whereupon the Pelasgians of
Lemnos, in revenge, carried off a number of Athenian women, and afterward
murdered them; as an expiation of which crime they were finally commanded
by the oracle at Delphi to surrender that island to Miltiades and the
Athenians. Herodotus repeatedly informs us that nearly the whole Ionian
race were formerly called Pelasgians.[207]

From all this it appears that the Pelasgians were the ancient occupants of
nearly all Greece; that they were probably of the same stock as their
Hellenic successors, but of another branch; that their language was
somewhat different, and contained words of barbaric (that is Phoenician or
Egyptian) origin, but not so different as to remain distinct after the
conquest. From the Pelasgian names which remain, it is highly probable
that this people was of the same family with the old Italians.[208] They
must have constituted the main stem of the Greek people. The Ionians of
Attica, the most brilliant portion of the Greeks, were of Pelasgic origin.
It may be therefore assumed, without much improbability, that while the
Dorian element gave the nation its strength and vital force, the Pelasgic
was the source of its intellectual activity and success in literature and
art. Ottfried Muller remarks that "there is no doubt that most of the
ancient religions of Greece owed their origin to this race. The Zeus and
Dione of Dodona, Zeus and Here of Argos, Hephaestos and Athene of Athens,
Demeter and Cora of Eleusis, Hermes and Artemis of Arcadia, together with
Cadmus and the Cabiri of Thebes, cannot properly be referred to any other
origin."[209]

Welcker[210] thinks that the ethnological conceptions of Aeschylus, in his
"Suppliants," are invaluable helps in the study of the Pelasgic relations
to the Greeks. The poet makes Pelasgos the king of Argos, and represents
him as ruling over the largest part of Greece. His