PART 7 – Ch.XLI.2

The great Pelasgian empire

(The Pelasgian language)

PART 7

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XLI. 2. The Pelasgians spoke a barbarian language, according to Herodotus.

We find other historical notes about the ancient language the Pelasgians with Herodotus.

“Which language had the Pelasgians used”, writes he (lib. I. 57, 58), “I certainly cannot affirm; but if we were permitted to draw a conclusion about the Pelasgians who still exist today in the city Crestonia above the Tursenii (in the eastern part of Macedonia, near the sea), and who once dwelt in the region today called Thessaliotis … also, if we had in mind the language of the Pelasgians who had founded the cities Placia and Scylax of Hellespont, and who had previously dwelt together with the Athenians, then we could affirm that the Pelasgians had used a barbarian language …In regard of the nation of the Hellenes though, these had always used, ever since their beginning, the same language, but different from that of the Pelasgian nation …The Pelasgians themselves were a people of barbarian nationality”.

Herodotus speaks here, as we see, only about the Pelasgians who had once dwelt on the territory of Hellada, and about the colonies of these Pelasgians established on the northern shores of the Aegean Sea.

It results therefore, from the notes which we find with Homer and Herodotus, that the barbarian language spoken by the Pelasgians from the territory of Hellada, was an external language. The great mass of the nation of the Barbarians was formed by the Pelasgian populations from the north of Greece, but especially by those from the north of the lower Istru and the Black Sea.

The same ethnic and geographical name had been also adopted by the Romans.

In the first times of the Roman empire, under the name Barbaria, Barbaricum, Barbaricum solum and terra Barbarorum, was meant the vast territory of Europe from the north of Istru to the Ocean and to the frontiers of Asia.

Trajan, writes Sextus Rufus (Brev. c. 8), has conquered Dacia, which was situated on the land of Barbaria, and has made it into a province.

The entire vast lands of Scythia, comprised between the lower Danube and the Meotic Lake, was called, according to Isidorus, terra barbarica (Orig. XIV. 4. 3).

The eastern parts of Mesia are called by Ovid, barbariae loca and Barbara terra (Trist. V. 12, 55; III. 3, 46). With Ammianus, all the countries north of Pannonia figure under the name Barbarorum terrae, Barbaricum and Barbaria (lib. XVII. 12; Bocking, Notit. Dign. 91; II. 96).

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