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

WHO WERE THE MAKERS ? 177
de Viane Oliver dons a suit of armour which a Jew had
endowed with magical properties, and it was the practice of
the Spanish Christians to get a Jew to bless their crops\
The conquering races have always the best chance of getting
a hearing, and hence stories of the brutality of peoples like the
Maories, the Sioux, and the Australian blacks are circulated by
the white men, who have robbed the aborigines of their huntinggrounds,
and too often of their wives.
It is well known that the attacks made on strangers by the
natives of South Sea islands are usually the result of the
brutalities experienced by once hospitable and unsophisticated
savages at the hands of the white trader. Tales of the untameable
ferocity of the islanders thus become rife, and they
are credited with much more than their due share of vice.
It was thus that too often the English settlers in Ireland
spoke of the ' '
mere Irishry as unmitigated savages, and it is
probable that the Romans of Britain described the natives who
lived beyond the Wall in terms not dissimilar. At least some
words of Procopius may be so interpi'eted. He wrote in the
who in old time
sixth century of Britain thus: "The people
lived in this island of Britain built a great wall, which cut off
a considerable portion of it. On either side of this wall the
land, climate, and everything are different.
For the district to
the east of the wall enjoys a healthy climate, changing with
the seasons, being moderately warm in summer and cool in
who live in the same
winter. It is thickly inhabited by people;
way as other folk." After enumerating its natural advantages
he then proct^eds to say that "On the west of the wall everything
is (juit(! the opposite so that, forsooth, it is impcjssible
;
for a man to live there for half-an-hour. Vij)ers and snakes
innumerable and every kind of wild l)cast share the possession
of that country between them and what is most
; marvellous,
the natives say that if a man crosses the wall and enters the
178 WHO WERE THE MAKERS?
district beyond it, he immediately dies, being quite unable to
withstand the pestilential climate which prevails there, and
that any beasts that wander in there straightway meet their
deaths"
There seems little doubt that the wall here meant is the
Wall of Hadrian, for the ancient geographers
about the orientation of the island.
are confused
It is therefore probable that the vipers and wild beasts who
lived beyond the wall were nothing more than the Caledonians,
nor is it surprising to learn that a sudden death overtook
either man or beast that crossed into their territory^.
As it is therefore certain that aboriginal tribes who survive
in mountains and forests are considered not only possessed of
skill in magic, but as also bestial in their lusts, and are even
transformed into vipers and wild beasts by the imagination of
their enemies, we may reasonably infer from the Centaur myth
that the ancient Pelasgian tribes of Pelion and Ossa had been
able to defy the invaders of Thessaly, and that they had from
the remotest times possessed these mountains.
We can now explain why they are called Pheres, Centauri
and Magnetes. Scholars are agreed in holding that Pheres
((finpe^) is only an Aeolic form for drjpe^, 'wild beasts.' Such
a name is not likely
to have been assumed by the tribe itself,
but is rather an opprobrious term applied to them by their
enemies.
Centauri was probably the name of some particular
clan of the Magnetes.
It follows then that the Mycenean
remains found in that
region are not Achcan, but Pelasgian.
It is rightly said by Dr Eduard Meyer that the name
Pelasgiotis a])plied to a portion of Thessaly is a proof that a
people called Pelasgi had once dwelt in that country, yet the
same scholar holds that the statements concerning Pelasgian
inhabitants of Arcadia and Argolis and the coming of Pelasgus
'
"
l)(M:r(!('s of l*;iviiii xi.ix.: adiiionori possessorew, ut non jiatiiiiitur fnictus
siios, ([uos a (loo {)ei