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Of the Carians and Leleges may well be quoted the words of Strabo (322), when, after describing the wide diffusion of the Leleges, he says (speaking of north-west Greece): ‘Now that most of the land has become desolate, and the settlements and especially the cities have disappeared, even if a man could give a definite account, he would do nothing useful, owing to the uncertainty (ἀδοξία) and to the fact that the peoples have disappeared, a movement which began long since.’ The best English accounts are those of Myres and Paton, J. H. S. xvi. 264 seq., and (of the Leleges) of Holm, i. 63-4, 72. The following are the most important points as to the two races: I. In Asia Minor. (1) In Homer (Il. x. 428-9) Dolon places them both with the Lycians, Mysians, and Phrygians among the allies of Troy. In the Catalogue (ii. 867) the Carians are βαρβαρόφωνοι, and inhabit Miletus. (2) Leleges are placed by Homer at Pedasus in the Troad (Il. xxi. 86-7), but do not occur in ‘the Catalogue’. (3) Strabo (321, 611) tells us that ancient ‘tombs and forts’ in Caria were called ‘Lelegian’. (4) Philippus, a Carian writer of the third century B. C., makes the Leleges serfs of the Carians; Plutarch (Qu. Gr. 46; Mor. 302) says that the survivors of the Leleges were serfs at Tralles. We may conclude they were genuine tribes on the Anatolian coast, of whom the Carians were the later comers and the conquerors. The two races were often identified, especially as the Carians seem to have adopted the speech of their subjects; for two races in Caria cf. 171. 6. II. In Greece proper. (1) Carians are traced at Megara (citadel called ‘Caria’, Paus. i. 40. 6), in the Argolid at Epidaurus and Hermione (Strabo, 374, quoting Aristotle), at Athens (Isagoras, H. v. 66. 1). But the last instance proves nothing, and the first may be connected with the later military importance of the Carians. (2) Leleges are mentioned continually as early inhabitants, e.g. by Strabo, 321-2 (quoting Arist.), in Acarnania, Aetolia, Boeotia, &c. This is probably invention based (a) on the fact that the Leleges, like the Pelasgians, are merely a prehistoric stop-gap; where nothing was known they were put in; (b) on resemblances of placenames in Caria and in central Greece (Busolt, i. 185. 4 n.), e.g. Abae in Caria and in Phocis. We may conclude that there is no sufficient evidence for the presence of Carians and Leleges in Greece proper. III. But it is not unlikely that the primitive population of Greece and of Anatolia was really akin; we find place-names ending in -νθος, -nda (and perhaps -ασσος, -ασα) common to both regions, and a number of words ‘earthy of the soil’, e.g. βόλινθος, with a similar termination (cf. Conway's list, B. S. A. viii. 155). We may also compare the primitive cist-graves of Assarlik in Caria with the pre-Mycenaean graves in the Cyclades. So the double axe was a symbol of the Carians, but perhaps they and the Cretans borrowed it equally from some earlier people. (For this view generally cf. Mackenzie, B. S. A. xii, p. 217 seq.) The double axe seems to be the symbol also of the Hittite god, Tesub. IV. The races in the islands. Greek theory made the Carians native in the islands (171. 2; Thuc. i. 4. 1, 8. 1, though with differing details). Thucydides seeks to confirm this by archaeological evidence; but the weapons found in the island-graves do not resemble the Carian weapons of c. 171. Probably, therefore, the native tradition is right (171. 5), that they were originally a mainland people, and the Greek tradition is a mere inference from the Thalassocracy of Minos. There were Carians in the islands, however, in the ninth and eighth centuries (v. i.). V. The theory once maintained that the Carians were the authors of the Mycenaean culture (e.g. by Köhler and Dümmler) must be abandoned, in view of the facts that hardly any Mycenaean remains are found in Caria, and those found show the culture in its decadence (J. H. S. xvi. 265). VI. For the affinities of the Carians with the Indo-European races cf. App. I, § 4. The Carians seem to have been the advanced guard of the tribes that invaded Anatolia from the north at the end of the second millennium B. C. Conway (u. s. 156) thinks the Carian names may belong to the Indo-European family of speech. If this be denied (with Kretschmer), we may suppose the conquerors adopted the language of the conquered earlier population. It is to this later conquering element we must attribute: (1) The Carian Thalassocracy (Myres, J. H. S. xxvi. 107-9). There were Carians in the islands at the time of the Greek settlement (171. 5). (2) The characteristic Carian weapons (171. 4 n.). (3) The Carian mercenaries of the seventh century (ii. 152. 5).
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