342 MURAL ARCHITECTURE | 
in the brightest, as well as in the darkest pages of 
their history, remains to us an enigma, the satis- 
factory solution of which will be most absolutely 
despaired of by him, who has most studiously. 
laboured at its investigation.” In his third edi- 
tion, Niebuhr added much new matter, but no 
new light. 
According to Strabo,* the Pelasgi nhabited 
Thessaly and Epirus, and from thence emigrated 
into Italy, where they built the city of Cere, in 
Etruria. Other writers speak of them in dif- 
ferent parts of the Peloponnesus. Perhaps the 
sum of our actual information regarding them, 
may be comprised in the following meagre facts : 
That they were not one nation, but a number of 
tribes ;f that they were wanderers ;{ that they 
existed long before the historical era; and that 
they either inhabited or over-ran, at different 
times, the greater part of Greece and Italy. 
My chief difficulty in admitting the Polygonal 
walls to be the work of the Pelasgi is this—Mée- 
buhr positively asserts their existence, both in 
“Bove p. cle. DB. vile 470. 
{ Homer speaks of the dura TMrwsywy, Iliad, ii. 840. 
t Strabo, b. xiii. 
