as an epithet specific to certain tribes. No test is imaginable, by which Herodotus can have ascertained that the Ionians had once been Pelasgians, but had changed into Hellenes: on the other hand, we can safely trust his testimony, that the only Pelasgian people to whom he could appeal,—viz. certain tribes near Trace,—talked a language quite unintelligible to the Greeks. In Italy, no town is more decidedly attested to have been a Pelasgian foundation, than Agylla in southern Etruria, and from it we seem to have a relic of the Pelasgian tongue. It is an inscription of two lines, in Greek letters, scratched round a small black pot, as follows[1]:—
(
Greek characters)
This is neither Latin nor Greek nor Umbrian nor Oscan. It is equally certain that it is not Etruscan; since in that tongue harsh unions of consonants abound, while in this distribution of vowels is as well proportioned as in the Negro-languages: moreover none of the well-known Etruscan words here occur. Since then the piece of pottery was found in a Pelasgian city, we must abide with Lepsius in the
- ↑ Lepsius; and Dennis's Etruria, vol. ii. p. 55. Vol. ii. p. 138, Mr. Dennis gives,—from an old tomb near Siena, opened in 1698, but long since closed and lost,—the following fragment of an Alphabet, which is probably Pelasgic: ΑΒCDEGΙΗΘΙΚLΜΝΞΟ. The seventh letter, apparently, has been miscopied from some equivelent of ו (Hebrew Vau).
