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 262 HISTORY OF GREECE. the Leleges, the Kuretes, the Kaukones, the Aones, the Tern- mikes, the Hyantes, the Telchines, the Boeotian Thracians, the Telebose, the Ephyri, the Phlegyoe, etc. These are names belonging to legendary, not to historical Greece, extracted out of a variety of conflicting legends, by the logographers and subse- quent historians, who strung together out of them a supposed history of the past, at a time when the conditions of historical evidence were very little understood. That these names desig- nated re.il nations, may be true, but here our knowledge ends. We have no well-informed witness to tell us their times, their limits of residence, their acts, or their character ; nor do we know how far they are identical with or diverse from the historical Hellens, whom we are warranted in calling, not, indeed, the first inhabitants of the country, but the first known to us upon any tol- erable evidence. If any man is inclined to call the unknown ante- Hellenic period of Greece by the name of Pelasgic, it is open to him to do so ; but this is a name carrying with it no assured predicates, noway enlarging our insight into real history, nor enabling us to explain what would be the real historical problem how or from whom the Hellens acquired that stock of dispositions, aptitudes, arts, etc., with which they begin their career. Whoever has examined the many conflicting systems respecting the Pelasgi, from the literal belief of Clavier, Larcher, and Raoul Rochette, (which appears to me, at least, the most consistent way of proceeding,) to the interpretative and half-incredulous processes applied by abler men, such as Niebuhr, or O. Miiller, or Dr. Thirlwall, 1 will not be displeased with my 1 Larcher, Chronologic d'Herodote, ch. viii. pp. 215, 274; Raoul Rochette, Histoire des Colonies Grecques, book i. ch. 5 ; Niebuhr, Rb'mische Geschichte, vol. i. pp. 26-G4, 2d ed. (the section entitled Die Oenotrer und Pelasger) ; O. Miiller, Die Etrusker, vol. i. (Einleitung, ch. ii. pp. 75-100) ; Dr. Thirl- wall, History of Greece, vol. i. ch. ii. pp. 36-64. The dissentient opinions of Kruse and Mannert- may be found in Kruse, Hellas, vol. i. pp. 398-425 ; Mannert, Geographic der Griechen und Romer, part viii. Introduct. p. 4, seqq. Niebuhr puts together all the mythical and genealogical traces, many of them in the highest degree vague and equivocal, of the existence of Pelasgi in various localities ; and then, summing up their cumulative effect, asserts ("not as an hypothesis, but with full historical conviction," p. 54) "that there was a time when the Pelasgians, perhaps the most extended people in