PART
5 –
Ch.XXXIII.27 (I – II)
The
Pelasgians or proto – Latins (Arimii)
(The
Pelasgians from the northern parts of the
XXXIII.
27. The ancient popular form of the name “Pelasgi”.
I.
The Pelasgii, writes Dionysius of Halikarnassus, had received their name from Pelasg, the son of Jove and Niobe (lib.
I. 11, 17).
We find the same
tradition with the poet Eschyl, who
presents Pelasg speaking the following words: “I am Pelasg, the son of Palaechton, born from Terra (Gaea), the ruler of
this country, and from my name, its king, has been called the nation of the Pelasgii, which masters this earth”
(Supplices, v.250-251).
Here Pelasg is, as
we see, the national name of an illustrious king, who had put the foundation of
the first powerful state, with a moral purpose, in
Before trying
though to find out about the ancient form of the name Pelasgi (ans), we must know in which part of the ancient world had
been the country of this great civilizing king of the Pelasgian people.
In ancient Greek
literature, the country or nationality of the more famous persons of the
mythical times was often indicated in a simple genealogical form. The
countries, lands, mountains, rivers, caves, were personified, and it was said,
for example, that the ancestor of a tribe, a king, or a hero, had been the son
of
Such a geographical
genealogy had also Pelasg, the first
traditional king of the Pelasgian people.
According to one of
these traditions, Pelasg had been a great grandson of Oceanos potamos (istru),
and its great affluent Tetys (
We find another
allegorical genealogy with the poet Asius
of
The blessed region
situated in the northern parts of the river Oceanos, where the earth blossomed
and bore fruit three times a year, is called by Hesiodus gaia melaina (Theog. v. 69; Dies et
Opera, v. 171)[1].
[1. The name gaia melaina does not
derive from the physical type, or the color of the inhabitants, but from the
geological quality of the particular zone of black, rich and extraordinarily
productive soil (Neumann, Die
Hellenen im Skythenlande, p. 14, 20). We have to admit though that the
geological and ethnographic meaning of this expression had been misinterpreted
since the most remote antiquity, even by Homer].
For some parts of
ancient
At the time when
king Stefan, called “the Saint”, ruled over
The epithet Nigra has a great significance for
history here, and “Ungria”, if not somehow a simple corrupt form of “Nigra”,
appears only as a political name given by the author, because Transilvania had
never been called with the particular geographical name of “Ungria”.
From the country,
the epithet of “negri” (TN – blacks)
passes on to its people, the Romanians.
In the chronicle of
Fazel-ullach-Rashid from around
1303, the Romanians from the southern parts of the Carpathians are called Kara-Ulaghi, meaning the “Black Valachii” (D’Ohsson, Histoire des Mongols. La Haye, 1834, t.II, 627-628; Hasdeu, Ist. Critica, p. 68).
The Turks call the
Romanian Country (Tera Romanesca) Kara-Iflak,
and
In the epic poems
of the southern Slavs, the Romanian Country is zemlja karablaska (Miladinovitzi,
203; Hasdeu, Ist. Crit. 107, 110).
In the documents of
the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate between the years 1390-1400,
Finally, we find
with Eschyl a third tradition about
the country of Pelasg.
In his poem
Supplices (v. 250), Eschyl tells us that Pelasg had been the son of Palaechton (the ancient earthling, born
on the earth), born of Gaia or Terra.
In ancient Greek
literature, the epithet “Palaechton” was hold only by the god Mars (Eschyl, Sept. c. Th. v. 105), also called Geticus by the Latin poets (Statius,
Silv. I. 2. 53), and protector of the Getic
plains (Virgil, Aen. X. 542).
We are presented
here with the question, why was the god Mars, the protector of the Getic plains
called “the ancient born on the earth”, or in other words, why it was said that
Mars was originally from the ancient
country (TN - Tera cea vechia)?
Under the name “Terra antiqua” appears in the geography
of the Pelasgian times a certain region, famous for its martial people and for
its richness (Homer, Hymn. XXX. 2).
Virgil also speaks
about this “Ancient Terra”, and tells us at the same time that the Greeks named
it also Hesperia, or “the country from the sundown” (Aen.
[2. Diodorus Siculus writes (IV. 27) about the origin of the name Hesperia, that Atlas – the ancient king of the Hyperboreans (Apollod. II. 5. 11) – had divided the parental inheritance with his
brother Hesperus, and that the part
over which ruled the latter had been called Hesperia.
It results therefore that, according
to the traditions of more ancient times, Hesperia had been situated in close
neighborhood with the kingdom of Atlas from the Atlas mountains (of Olt), in the northern parts of Istru. From a
geographical point of view, the name Hesperia refers in any case to the lands
situated beyond the Carpathians mountains, which formed the separation line
between the eastern and the western regions of ancient
In Romanian heroic songs, which are
of a very remote age, we still find today some mentions about the country from the sundown (TN – tera de la scapatat), identical with
Ardel.
In the epic cycle about Old Novac it is said that his porch was
at the sundown (Catana, Balade pop. 108). In another versions though, his sons are
called “brave men from Ardel” (Sezatoarea,
The name ”Terra
antiqua” is the antithesis of the new countries; or in other words, “Tera
vechia” is the mother country of the Pelasgian pastoral tribes, which,
migrating in the course of a long series of centuries, towards south and west,
still remembered an ancient country, or the places from where their parents had
come, as the same meaning still has in our times the name “the old village” as
opposed to “the new village”.
From this “Tera
vechia” therefore, once unbeaten in wars and blessed with the richness of its
soil (potens armis atque ubere glebae), had been originally Mars, called Palaechton, the father of king Pelasg.
Thus, we have here
the following genealogies regarding the country of Pelasg, the first monarch
who had ruled over the great people of the Pelasgii:
It results
therefore that, according to Greek traditions, Pelasg, the ancient
representative of the Pelasgian people, was originally from the northern parts
of Istru.
II.
We now know which
was “Tera vechia” (Terra antiqua) of
the Pelasgian people, situated on the northern parts of Istru.
We have to address
now the question of the form of the name Pelasgoi, as it appears in the
ancient Greek literature. But before all else, we must state here the
following:
In the ancient
topical nomenclature we do not find any trace of the form of the name Pelasgoi
as presented by the Greek authors, either on the territory of Hellada, of Asia
Minor, or in the Italic peninsula, where as we know, so many Pelasgian tribes
had once settled.
This is evident
proof that the name Pelasgoi, as used by Homer, does not correspond to a true
popular form; that we have here only a term, corrupted by the mode of
pronunciation and writing of the Greek authors.
The Greek
geographer Strabo, originally from
Asia Minor, wishing to indicate an etymology of the name Pelasgoi - but in an
entirely frivolous way - tells us that in older times the inhabitants of Attica
called these people Pelasgoi (ciconiae,
meaning storks), because they migrated from one place to another (Geogr. Lib.
V. 2. 4).
We find the same
idea expressed by the Diodorus Siculus
(I. V. 80), who uses for the Pelasgians the epithet planomenoi, “nomads”,
from planao,
to wander.
All the ancient and
new attempts of finding the origin of this name, from its Greek form of Pelasgoi,
could not reach any serious result.
In reality, the
original form of the name “Pelasgi”
had been completely different.
The Greeks had
borrowed this term from the barbarian populations of the Hem peninsula; had
borrowed and had distorted; and if we took into account the Greek phonetic
changes, then it is easy to understand that the correct, usual form of this name, in the speech of the
southern populations, had been without doubt Balasci, or Belasci,
where the Greeks, by the nature of their language, had replaced, as in many
other cases, B with P, and from the suffix ascus, asci, had formed a more harsh, guttural
one, asgos,
asgoi.
In prehistoric
antiquity had existed, as we know, only two big groups of the Pelasgii.
The first group
were the Arimii, a name which
appears in various regions under the various forms: Rami (Ramnes), Remi, Romi,
Rumi, Aramaei, Arimi, Arimani, Remores, Aremorici, Ormini, Orchomeni, etc.
The second group
were the Abii, or the White Arimii (Abii, Abarimones), to which belonged
the inhabitants of
That the form
“Balasci” or “Belasci” as ethnic name had once been used in the Balkan
peninsula is proved by the term Balascae,
as were called the Thracii of the first half of the Middle Ages (Tomaschek, Die alten Thraker, II. 4).
The Romanian
Country (Tera Romanesca) is called even today Vlaska zemlia in the language of the southern Slavs. A district of
the Romanian Country is called Vlasca.
We also find here the villages Balaci,
and the family names Balaciu and Balascu (Hasdeu, Etym. Magn. III. 2992, 2943). Finally, the part of
The suffix ascu is neither Greek, nor Slav.
This suffix had
also existed in the ancient language of the Pelasgian population, having the
same meaning as escu has in the
Romanian language of today.
On a Roman
inscription discovered at Genova, on the territory of the ancient Ligurii, we
find mentioned the rivers Neviasca,
Tulelasca, Veraglasca, Vinelasca, certainly reflecting the names of some
ancient Ligurian localities (C. I. L.
vol. V. nr. 7749.
The food tabula of
Veleia also mentions two names of localities ended in ascus: fundus Areliascus
and fundus Caudalascus (C. I. L. vol. XI. p. 215, nr. 1147, p.
5. 1. 21).
Finally, we find
even today in the upper parts of
In the provinces
Genova and Porto Maurizio: Caiasca, Marinasco, Morasca, Bagnasco;
In the province
In
The same suffixes
also appear in the topical nomenclature of Switzerland, Tyrol, upper Bavaria,
Alsace, Loraine, France, Corsica, Spain and Portugal (Ibid. II. p. 68. 86. 99).
We resume: the
ancient popular form of the name Pelasgi
had been Belasci and Balasci; and the ancient country, the
power center from which this people had expanded, had been in
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