Pelasgians - Ancient Literary Evidence - Historians - Herodotus

Herodotus

In the Histories, Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus wrote, with uncertainty, about the language of the Pelasgians:

"I am unable to state with certainty what language the Pelasgians spoke, but we could consider the speech of the Pelasgians who still exist in settlements above Tyrrhenia in the city of Kreston, formerly neighbors to the Dorians who at that time lived in the land now called Thessaliotis; also the Pelasgians who once lived with the Athenians and then settled Plakia and Skylake in the Hellespont; and along with those who lived with all the other communities and were once Pelasgian but changed their names. If one can judge by this evidence, the Pelasgians spoke a barbarian language. And so, if the Pelasgian language was spoken in all these places, the people of Attica being originally Pelasgian, must have learned a new language when they became Hellenes. As a matter of fact, the people of Krestonia and Plakia no longer speak the same language, which shows that they continue to use the dialect they brought with them when they migrated to those lands."

Herodotus alludes to other districts where Pelasgian peoples lived on under changed names; Samothrace and "the Pelasgian city of Antandrus" in the Troad probably provide instances of this. He mentions that there were Pelasgian populations on the islands of Lemnos and Imbros. Those of Lemnos he represents as being of Hellespontine Pelasgians who had been living in Athens but whom the Athenians resettled on Lemnos and then found it necessary to reconquer. This expulsion of (non-Athenian) Pelasgians from Athens may reflect, according to historian Robert Buck, "a dim memory of forwarding of refugees, closely akin to the Athenians in speech and custom, to the Ionian colonies". Herodotus also mentions the Cabeiri, the gods of the Pelasgians, whose worship gives an idea of where the Pelasgians once were.

Another claim made by Herodotus entails the Hellenes (associated with the Dorians) having separated from the Pelasgians with the former surpassing the latter numerically:

"As for the Hellenes, it seems obvious to me that ever since they came into existence they have always used the same language. They were weak at first, when they were separated from the Pelasgians, but they grew from a small group into a multitude, especially when many peoples, including other barbarians in great numbers, had joined them. Moreover, I do not think the Pelasgian, who remained barbarians, ever grew appreciably in number or power."

He states that the Pelasgians of Athens were called "Cranai" and that the Pelasgian population among the Ionians of the Peloponnesus were the "Aegialian Pelasgians". Moreover, Herodotus mentions that the Aeolians, according to the Hellenes, were known anciently as "Pelasgians".