XIII.] THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES. 505 



which in a sense may be true enough. All the heterogeneous 

 elements have been fused in a single Hellenic nationality, built 

 upon a rough Pelasgic substratum, and adorned with all the graces 

 of Hellenic culture. 



Now to make good this hypothesis, it is necessary to show, 

 first, that the Pelasgians were not an obscure tribe, a small 

 people confined to some remote corner of Hellas, but a wide- 

 spread nation diffused over all the land ; secondly, that this 

 nation, as far as can now be determined, presented mental and 

 other characters answering to those of Sergi's Mediterraneans, and 

 also such as might be looked for in a race capable of developing 

 the splendid /Egean culture of pre-Hellenic times. 



On the first point it may suffice to say that the Pelasgians 

 were everywhere 1 , so much so that the difficulty 

 rather is to discover a district where their presence f P the H 

 was unknown. They fill the background of Hellenic Mykensean 

 origins, and even spread beyond the Hellenic 

 horizon, to such an extent that there seems little room for 

 any other people between the Adriatic and the Hellespont. 

 Prof. W. Ridgeway 2 has brought together a good many passages 

 which clearly establish their universal range, as well as their 

 occupation especially of those places where have been found 

 objects of Mykenaean and pre-Mykenaean culture, such as en- 

 graved gems, pottery, implements, buildings, inscriptions in 

 pictographic and syllabic scripts. In Crete they had the "great 

 city of Knossos" in Homer's time :; ; not only was Mykenae 

 theirs, but the whole of Peloponnesus took the name of Pelasgia ; 

 the kings of Tiryns were Pelasgians, and Aeschylus calls Argos 

 a Pelasgian city ; an old wall at Athens was attributed to them, 

 and the people of Attica had from all time been Pelasgians 4 . 

 Orchomenus in Bceotia was founded by a colony from Pelas- 

 giotis in Thessaly ; Lesbos also was called Pelasgia, and Homer 

 knew of Pelasgians in the Troad. Their settlements are further 



1 Kara Ti]i> EXXdSa Tracrav iireiroXaae (Strabo, V. 220). This might almost 

 be translated, "they flooded the whole of Greece." 



2 Acadetuy, July 13, 1895, p. 32; and elsewhere. 



3 Od. xix. 



4 Time. I. 3. 



