Pelasgi
（Πελασγοί). A name given to the earliest (prehistoric) inhabitants of Greece. In Homer the name applied now to a people in Asia Minor dwelling near Ilium ( Il. ii. 840), and now to people inhabiting various parts of Greece. Thus, Argos is called Pelasgian (id ii. 681), and the god worshipped at Dodona is the “Pelasgian” Zeus (id. xvi. 233). Pelasgians are also spoken of as dwelling in Crete (Odyss. xix. 177). Herodotus tells us that the earliest name that Greece bore was Πελασγία, and ascribes a Pelasgic origin to some of the Greek peoples, as the Arcadians, Athenians, Aeolians, etc. (cf. Herod.i. 146; vii. 94, Herod., 95; viii. 44). He draws a definite distinction between the Pelasgi and the Hellenes proper, as being different in both race and language (i. 56, 58). Thucydides agrees with Herodotus, and goes a step further in identifying them with the Tyrrheni. He also mentions them as found in the island of Lemnos, on which see the article Etruria, p. 625.Modern scholars, in general, regard the Pelasgi as a prehistoric people, probably non-Aryan in their racial affinities, and possibly to be identified with the same branch as the Etruscans, who came to Greece from Asia at a period earlier than that of the Indo-European migration. Still others use the name as designating the Indo-Europeans before the time of their separation into Greeks and Italians. To them are usually ascribed certain religious cults, which are in their origin non-Hellenic, such as that of the Cabeiri (q.v.) and of Zeus at Dodona; and also the architectural remains popularly called Cyclopean. The ancient authorities on the subject of the Pelasgi are collected by Bruck in his monograph Quae Veteres de Pelasgis Tradiderunt (1884). See also Eissner, Die Alten Pelasger (Leipzig, 1825); Hesselmeyer, Die Pelasgerfrage; Flor, Zur Geschichte der Pelasger (1859); and the articles Cyclopes; Hellas; Indo-European Languages; Mycenae.