392 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



tia. Tiryns itself was the abode of fishermen, and Argos was 

 built by Cyclopeans, notwithstanding that Euripides calls it 

 Pelasgian. This last name appears to be more generical than 

 the other, and to have superseded it, though it is not improba- 

 ble that the Cyclopeans were likewise a distinct tribe of the 

 family which was soon driven forward to Sicily, where we 

 have already pointed out that they appear to have been con- 

 nected with the Finns of High Asia, in their quality of miners 

 and metallurgists. In connection with the kindred Siculi, 

 they had settlements on the coast of Italy, and with the Sicani, 

 another clan of the same stock, had penetrated to Liguria and 

 Spain. In Greece, the Pelasgians appear to have constituted 

 the chief portion of the historical dominant population. They 

 were most numerous in Thessaly. The Perhasbians, Caucones, 

 Dolopians, Athamanes, the Helli, and Graii, on the west coast 

 of Epirus, were Pelasgi. The Pasonian and the Cecropian 

 Athenians were of the same stock. In the peninsula they 

 were known by the names of Argives, Achaians, and Arca- 

 dians. They built more than one Argos; and if the name of 

 Larissa is to be taken as a sure indication of their presence, they 

 would be found extended from Nineveh to the confines of Egypt, 

 Spain, and Southern Germany. There were Pelasgians in 

 Crete, and the western tribes of the race had Finnic affinities 

 in Upper Italy, not less than at least a partial community of 

 opinions and speech with the Celtic and Scytho Celtic nations. 

 In Syria they may have constructed the enormous ramparts 

 of Tortosa with stones, some of which are not less than thirty 

 feet in length, by ten or twelve in thickness, and at so remote 

 a date that the place is named, in Genesis, by the designation 

 of Arpad, or Arvedi, (chap, x.) 



Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly, being all to the north of 

 Greece properly so called, and west of the Bosphorus, nations 

 moving to the south came across the Danube, from Dacia, as 

 well as from Asia Minor, without the route of their movement 

 being known in Greece. Many came westward in fleets of 



