THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

'
have already shown that Telephus
WHO WERE THE MAKERS ? 189
led a band of Arcadian
Pelasgians to the Troad, that two famous eponymous chieftains
of that region, Teucer and Dardanus, were of the Pelasgian
stock, and that Cyzicus was we Pelasgian, may conclude that
the Leleges were of the Pelasgic stock.
The same holds true for Greece itself Laconia was called
Lelegia after the eponymous hero Lelex, who is described as an
autochthon. According to Pausanias\ that Lelex who had come
to Megara from Egypt, whose tomb was shown hard by the sea
at the foot of the acropolis of Nisaea, and after whom the
aboriginal inhabitants of Megara took the name of Leleges, was
son of Poseidon by Libya, the daughter of Epaphus, the son of
lo, for whose genuine
of Aeschylus (p. 210).
The Leleges of Megara
Pelasgian descent we have the testimony
and their descendants who settled
in Messenia must be regarded as part of the ancient Pelasgic
stock.
Again, the Leleges are intimately associated with the Teleboans
in Leucas, but the Teleboans, as we have seen, are
distinctly Pelasgian according to Acusilaus.
As the Leleges figure much more largely than the Carians
in the traditions of the mainland of Greece, and as on the other
hand the Carian name held its own on the Asiatic side until
classical times, we may perhaps inf(!r that originally the Leleges
were the more western, the Carians the mort- eastern of the
two tribes, which overlapjied and ran int(j each other in the
Aegean islands.
The Leleges niay be considered a great tribe, like that of
the Minyae, who are found in Thessaly, Boeotia, Messenia,
Thera and her daughter Gyrene, lint it must be no more
assumed in their ease than in that of the Minvae that ])e(;ause
by the fifth century li.c there was no coinmunity ;u'tually
existing under the name of Leleges or ^linyans
tlie race had
therefore become extinct. We might just as well aigue that^
b(,'caiise there are no peoph' in iMigland at. the present time
who are called Saxons, or Angles, or .Jutes, therefore the
p(jsterity of these tribes no longer e.\ist.s. We have alieady
190 WHO WERE THE MAKERS ?
noticed that Pausanias calls attention to the fact that though
there were various communities in Hellas who were Dryopians,
yet in his day the Asineans (p. 104) were the only people who
continued to style themselves such.
It is highly probable therefore that the Leleges continued
to form a large element of the population of various parts of
Greece, as in fact we learn from Aristotle. It is tolerably clear
from the statement of Herodotus that they were not expelled
from the islands by Minos, for they simply became his subjects.
If Minos even had completely extirpated them and planted the
islands witli fresh colonists from Crete, the population of the
islands would still have been Pelasgian. Later still came the
Ionic movement, when, on the Dorian invasion, the old Pelasgian
population of Peloponnesus combining with their kinsfolk
from Attica streamed across the Aegean in search of new
homes. Even if they had swept out the old inhabitants of the
islands root and branch, the new occupants would have been
Pelasgians. But that such was the case is unlikely, for we
know that on the mainland of Asia Minor the Athenians, who,
as Herodotus explicitly states, had brought no women with
them, mairied the daughters of the (Jarians whom they slew'.
We know fi-om an Attic inscription that after the conquest of
Salamis the Athenians did not exterminate the old inhabitants,
but that on the contrary the latter continued in many
cases to
till the land allotted to the Athenian cleruchs'-. It is probable
that much the same prevailed in the Ionic advance into the
islands, and that practically the old population remained, and
probably remains in large part to this veiy hour.
sti'ongly supported by the story
This view is
of the Ionic settlement of
Samos already cited.
One thing however seems certain, and that is that at no
time did th(' Achcans foiin the population of the C'}'clades
:
for,
though Agamemnon ruled over all Argolis and many islands,
3('t
inasmuch as the Ionic migration aci'oss the Aegean only
took place on the Doi'ic, con(iuest, the men who acknowledged
the suzerainty of Agamemnon over their seagirt homes must
iiave been either of the old race called inditt'erently
in the case
I. U, :t.
1
I. 1 tC.
-
l). H. Robcrl.s, (Ircck KpinnipJn/, p. HI.