The Pelasgi. 845 



were not entirely in a barbarous state, and that they were al- 

 ready acquainted with several arts. 



The Pelasgi were originally from India, of which the San- 

 scrit roots that occur abundantly in their language do not per- 

 mit us to doubt. It is probable, that, by crossing the moun- 

 tains of Persia, they penetrated as far as the Caucasus ; and 

 that from this point, instead of continuing their route by land 

 they embarked on the Black Sea, and made a descent upon the 

 coasts of Greece. They founded several cities in that country, 

 and there are still found in the places where they first settled, 

 Thyrintum, Mycene, &c., remains of their buildings, known by 

 the name of Cyclopean Walls. In the time of Pausanius, it 

 was already known that these buildings were anterior to the ar- 

 rival of the Egyptian colonies, and that to the labours of tlie 

 Pelasgi were owing certain gigantic works, such as the treasuries 

 of Minias, and the canals dug through Mount Ptous, to afford 

 an issue to the waters of the lake Copais, and prevent the inun- 

 dation of Bceotia. 



The religion of the first Pelasgi was much more simple than 

 that of the Greeks. It was probably confined to the deification 

 of certain powers of nature, and their representation under sen- 

 sible forms. 



The disturbances which took place in Egypt about the four- 

 teenth and fifteenth centuries before our era, caused various emi- 

 grations. Those which directed themselves towards Greece 

 were pretty numerous. The best known ai-e those of Cecrops, 

 Danaus, and Cadmus. Cecrops, in the year 1556 before Christ, 

 carried into Attica the mysteries of Isis or Ceres; Danaus, in 

 1485, brought over the thesmophories ; and Cadmus, in 1493, 

 imported the alphabet, whose oriental origin is sufficiently indi- 

 cated by the form of the letters and the name which they have 

 preserved. The colonies arrived with sufficient strength to es- 

 tablish themselves in the country of the Pelasgi, and diffuse their 

 civiUzation there. But, as we have said, their chiefs had only 

 been half-instructed in the science of Egypt, so that they only 

 brought over the external form of the rehgion, without connect- 

 ing with it any metaphysical idea. Their divinities, although 

 evidently borrowed from the Egyptian mythology, henceforth 

 appeared only under purely human forms, and this very anthro- 



