Pelasger

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The Pelasger ( ancient Greek Πελασγοί Pelasgoí ) was one of the oldest populations in Greece in ancient times . Regardless of whether there actually ever was a clearly definable people with that name, researchers sometimes used Pelasger to refer to prehistoric non-Greek-speaking groups in Greece.

Mention in ancient literature

Pelasger are already mentioned in Homer (8th / 7th century BC). Accordingly, Pelasgians lived in the Thessalian Argos ("Pelasgian Argos"), Larisa , Dodona (in Epirus ) and on Crete . Larisa probably means the Thessalonian Larisa, but possibly also a place of the same name in the Troas . The Larissa Castle is also mentioned in this context .

Dodona is also given by Hesiod as the seat of the Pelasgians (frg. 212). He also describes Pelasgos , the progenitor of the Pelasgians, as autochthonous (frg. 43). Hesiod's remark that Pelasgos was the father of Lycaon (frg. 44), because Lycaon lived in Arcadia , which does not fit the areas in which Homer settles the Pelasgians, causes difficulties for both modern research and ancient authors .

Hecataus of Miletus , whose works are only partially known through quotations from later authors, wrote et al. a. that the Pelasgians were driven out of envy by the Athenians from Attica and fled to Lemnos because the Pelasgians knew how to make the land very fertile and flourishing. In addition to this, Herodotus describes another version of this event in his work (see below).

According to Herodotus , the first name of Greece is said to have been Pelasgía ( Πελασγία ). He names Pelasger as residents of Plakia and Sykale on the Hellespont , Samothrace , Dodona, Arcadia , Argos, Lesbos as well as Lemnos and Imbros . Herodotus also mentions (in connection with Plaka and Sykale - I, 57, see above) Pelasger, neighboring the Tyrsenians , in Kreston. The location of Kreston is unclear, according to the prevailing opinion it is to be assumed in the area of Chalkidike . Herodotus also claims that the inhabitants of Attica are of Pelasgic origin. Judging by the Pelasgians of his time, the language of the Pelasgians was a non-Greek one.

Herodotus also referred to immigrants as Pelasgians who were allocated land on the Hymettos and who were later driven out by the Athenians and fled to Lemnos. In addition to the explanation of Hecataeus (see above), he gives a planned attack by the Pelasgians as the reason in the Athenian version of this story. Research tries to solve the problem of the double presence of Pelasgians in Attica - on the one hand as an indigenous population, on the other as immigrants who were expelled again - by assuming that it was already in Herodotus (approx. 490-424 BC). ) the Pelasgians were sometimes confused with the Tyrsenians (see below) and Herodotus, as Hekataios probably also already meant, with the Pelasgians who had immigrated to the area. These are also attested by many other sources on Lemnos.

In the case of later sources - unless they repeat statements by older authors who have already been mentioned - it is even more difficult to decide whether they mean the Pelasgians of Homer, Hesiod and Herodotus or another old population. Pelasgian was also increasingly used as a synonym for 'very old'. Roman authors sometimes even equate Pelasgians with the Greek population. In addition to the above regions, which according to sources from the 4th century BC Boeotia , parts of the Argolis , Sikyon , places in western Asia Minor and many regions and cities in Italy, from the Po plain to southern Italy , are said to have been settled by Pelasgians .

Way of life of the Pelasgians according to ancient sources

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According to ancient sources, the Pelasgians were settled and practiced agriculture and cattle breeding, cleared forests, leveled rocks, dried up swamps, built towns with permanent castles in fertile valley plains, which mostly bore the name Larissa , and built - according to the later sources - the oldest Buildings ( Cyclopean walls ). On the west side of the Aegean Sea , it was the Minyer tribe on the Pagasitic Gulf who are said to have attempted sea ventures first, which were glorified in the Argonauts legend.

They worshiped - again according to the much later Greek sources - as the highest god Zeus , the Aither , the shining sky, without image and temple on towering mountain peaks, similar to the Minoan summit sanctuaries . The polytheism and anthropomorphism of the later period were alien to them.

interpretation

How much historical truth there is behind the ancient accounts of the Pelasgians has long been debated. The numerous mentions by ancient authors perhaps show that in archaic and probably also classical times , when the early sources emerged, a population with a presumably non-Greek language was still understandable in some areas of Greece. Since the Pelasger can not be proven otherwise (for example archaeologically, because the "Cyclopean walls" do not come from them, but from the Mycenaean Greeks of the Bronze Age ), modern research on the Pelasger problem has so far hardly been able to find out more.

In parts of the research, the name does not designate a homogeneous or special tribe with a uniform language, but the remnants of the population of Greece from the time before the immigration of the Indo-Europeans, who had not yet fully assimilated at the beginning of classical Greece and are therefore - e. B. linguistically - were still distinguishable from the rest of the population.

A pre-Indo-European origin of the Pelasgians is not without controversy. Greek sources consider the Pelasgians mostly as an independent, very old people, but of the same origin as the Hellenes. So boasted z. B. in Attica, Ionia and other landscapes many genders of their alleged Pelasgic origin.

Attempts to relate the Pelasgians with the Egyptian texts from the time of Ramses III. Peleset mentioned , who belonged to the sea ​​peoples and are very likely identical with the Philistines , are controversial and, above all, etymologically doubtful. In particular, a conversion of the "g" in Pelasger to a "t" in Egyptian sources - there the Philistines are reproduced with the consonants plst - is difficult to explain.

language

For the question of which language (or languages) the Pelasgians used, see Aegean Languages .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinz F. Wendt: Fischer Lexikon Sprachen , Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag 1961 (October 1987 edition), ISBN 3-596-24561-3 , p. 135
  2. ↑ Homer, Iliad 2, 681.
  3. ↑ Homer, Iliad 2, 840ff.
  4. ↑ Homer, Iliad 16:23.
  5. ↑ Homer, Odyssey 19, 177ff.
  6. ^ Fritz Lochner-Hüttenbach: The Pelasger. Work from the Institute for Comparative Linguistics in Graz . Vienna, 1960, p. 98 f. (with further literature on the controversy).
  7. ^ Fritz Lochner-Hüttenbach: The Pelasger. Work from the Institute for Comparative Linguistics in Graz . Vienna, 1960, p. 101f.
  8. ↑ FGrHist 1 F 127; Quotation from Herodotus, Historien 6, 137.
  9. ↑ Herodotus, Historien II, 56.
  10. ↑ a b c Herodotus, Historien I, 57.
  11. ^ Herodotus, Historien II, 51.
  12. ↑ Herodotus, Historien II, 51ff.
  13. ^ Herodotus, Historien IV, 145.
  14. ↑ Herodotus, Historien V, 26.
  15. ↑ Herodotus, Historien 6, 136f.
  16. ^ Fritz Lochner-Hüttenbach: The Pelasger. Work from the Institute for Comparative Linguistics in Graz . Vienna, 1960, pp. 141 ff.