PART 6 – Ch.XXXIX.6.IV

The great Pelasgian empire

(Decline of the Pelasgian empire)

Other kings of the divine dynasty

PART 6

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XXXIX. 6. IV. Dardanos (Dercunos, Draganes).

Another king who had ruled at north of the lower Danube had been Dardanos, a grandson of king Atlas from the country of the Hyperboreans, or from the Riphei mountains (Carpathians).

According to Diodorus Siculus, Dardanos had been a king of the Scythians (shepherd), and he had left his country because Jove had killed one of his brothers (IV. 43). Migrating from Scythia to the island of Samothrace, and from there into Asia Minor, Dardanos had founded near the shores of the Hellespont the city Dardanum or Dardania, later called Troy, and had become in this way the first father and founder of the Trojan dynasty (Virgil, Aen. VIII. 134). His sister was called ‘Armonia (Ariannus Nicomed. Fr. 65; Diod. Sic. IV. 75; V. 48), meaning Armana, Arimana (from the country of the Arimii).

In Greek traditions Dardanos also figures under the name Dercunus (Apollod.Bibl. lib.II.5.10. 9), while the poet Avienus calls him Draganes (Ora mar. v. 196-198), and tells us at the same time that his descendents were settled in the cold countries of the north.

This Dardanus, Dercunus, or Draganes, grandson of the titan Atlas, is called in Romanian traditional poems “Dragan from Baragan, the grandson of Mos Stan” (Teodorescu, P. p. 688; Tocilescu, Mater. 1271), the same Stan who, as we saw above, represents in Romanian epic songs Atlas and Neptune. Dragan of Romanian folk poems, exactly like his grandfather Stan, occupies himself only with the twining the nooses and the catching of the wild horses which wandered on the plain of Baragan [1].

[1. And Dragan from Baragan, little grandson of Mos Stan… He kept at weaving nooses…

He to the well then came….The nooses he spread, on the fork he wound them.

(Rev. Tara noua, An. II. p. 749)].

The same pastoral life was also led in the beginning by the descendents of Dardanos, on the shores of the Hellespont. Homer tells us that the son of Dardanos, Erichthonius, had 3,000 mares grazing on the watery plains near the Hellespont, out of which 12 were from the noble race called Boreas (northern); they hopped over the sown fields without touching them, and passed in their fast gallop over the angry waves of the vast sea (Iliad, XX. 215; XIV. 307) [1].

[1. This idea is borrowed from the folk songs of the Pelasgians from the Istru:

“You horse, brave one, come, quicken your gait,

To cross this large Danube (TN – large = mare = sea).

The horse speeded his gait, over the Danube he flew”.

(Negoescu, Balade, p. 21)].

So, according to historical traditions, the ancient inhabitants of the city Dardanum from Asia Minor, seem to have been only a simple colony of the Shepherd Scythians, the horse growers from the lower Istru. Homer attributes to the Trojans, descendents of Dardanos, also the epithet ippodamoi, equum-domitores (Iliad, II. 230).

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