504 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



identified with the Pelasgians, as this term is understood by 

 Sergi. 



It is, I suppose, universally allowed that Greece really was 

 peopled before the arrival of the Hellenes, which term is here 

 to be taken as comprising all the Aryan intruders of Hellenic 

 speech. On their arrival the Hellenes therefore found the land 

 not only inhabited, but inhabited by a cultured people more 

 civilized than themselves, that is to say, the pre-Mykensans, 

 Sergi's Pelasgian branch of the Mediterranean or Afro-European 

 stock, whom the proto-Hellenes naturally regarded as their 

 superiors, and whom their first singers also natu- 

 rall y called & OL neAeuryoi' 1 . But in the course of a 



wide-spread f ew centuries 2 these Pelasgians became Hellen- 



People. -11 



ized, all but a few scattered groups, which lagging 

 behind in the general social progress are now also looked upon as 

 barbarians, speaking barbaric tongues, and are so described by 

 contemporary historians. Then these few remnants of a glorious 

 but forgotten past are also merged in the Hellenic stream, and 

 can no longer be distinguished from other Greeks by contemporary 

 writers. Hence for Dionysius the Pelasgians are simply Greeks, 



1 "We recognize in the Pelasgi an ancient and honourable race, ante- 

 Hellenic, it is true, but distinguished from the Hellenes only in the political 

 and social development of their age.... Herodotus and others take a prejudiced 

 view when, reasoning back from the subsequent Tyrrhenian Pelasgi, they call 

 the ancient Pelasgians a rude and worthless race, their language barbarous, and 

 their deities nameless. Numerous traditionary accounts, of undoubted authen- 

 ticity, describe them as a brave, moral, and honourable people, which was less 

 a distinct stock and tribe, than a race united by a resemblance in manners and 

 the forms of life" (W. Wachsmuth, The Historical Antiquities of the Greeks, 

 etc., Engl. ed. 1837, I. p. 39). Remarkable words to have been written before 

 the recent revelations of archaeology in Hellas. 



2 That the two cultures went on for a long time side by side is evident from 

 the different social institutions and religious ideas prevailing in different parts 

 of Hellas during the strictly historic period. Thus there is no trace of fetishism 

 in Homer, who represents the Achaian (Hellenic) side, whereas fetish worship, 

 as popularly understood, prevailed in Arcadia, Attica, and other Pelasgic lands. 

 So with totemism, and the dark Poseidon of the Pelasgians who was finally 

 eclipsed by the fair Apollo, Zeus, and other gods of the Achaioi. It is a 

 vast subject, which has yet been scarcely touched ; its elucidation will explain 

 much in the obscure ethnical relations of prehistoric Greece. 



