OF REMOTE AGES. 341 
and La Signora Dionigi, class them together, 
and call them Pelasgic, asserting that they are 
found only where the Pelasgi are known to have 
dwelt. Who, then, were the Pelasgz, and where 
did they dwell? 
I confess myself unable to give any satisfactory 
answer to either of these questions. I have 
read what Mebuhr,* Thirlwall,t Middleton, 
and Micali§ have been able to collect respecting 
them, and I have referred to several of the 
ancient authors from whom they quote,|| but every 
additional investigation seems to cover the sub- 
ject with additional obscurity, a fact which cannot 
be better expressed than in the hopeless summing 
up of Niebuhr, in his first edition. ‘ We must 
rest satisfied with the impossibility of determining 
with certainty what nation were the Pelasgi, how 
distinguished from the Greeks, and whether those 
who are mentioned as in different places, belonged 
to the same stock. Every notice of this people, 
* History of Rome, third edition, I. 
{ Hist of Greece, I. 
t Grecian Remains, fol. c. 3. 
§ Italia avanti i Romani, I, c. 7. 
|| Herod. i. ¢. 57. ii. ec. 136. 
Homer, Iliad, ii. 840. Odyss. xix. 1. 177. 
Strabo, b. v. and xiii. 
{| Hist. of Rome, I. p. 36. 
