[2]
As for the Pelasgi, I have already discussed them.1 As for the Leleges, some conjecture that they are the same as the Carians, and others that they were only fellow-inhabitants and fellow-soldiers of these; and this, they say, is why, in the territory of Miletus, certain settlements are called settlements of the Leleges, and why, in many places in Caria, tombs of the Leleges and deserted forts, known as “Lelegian forts,” are so called. However, the whole of what is now called Ionia used to be inhabited by Carians and Leleges; but the Ionians themselves expelled them and took possession of the country, although in still earlier times the captors of Troy had driven the Leleges from the region about Ida that is near Pedasus and the Satnioïs River. So then, the very fact that the Leleges made common cause with the Carians might be considered a sign that they were barbarians. And Aristotle, in his Polities,2 also clearly indicates that they led a wandering life, not only with the Carians, but also apart from them, and from earliest times; for instance, in the Polity of the Acarnanians he says that the Curetes held a part of the country, whereas the Leleges, and then the Teleboae, held the westerly part; and in the Polity of the Aetolians (and likewise in that of the Opuntii and the Megarians) he calls the Locri of today Leleges and says that they took possession of Boeotia too; again, in the Polity of the Leucadians he names a certain indigenous Lelex, and also Teleboas, the son of a daughter of Lelex, and twenty-two sons of Teleboas, some of whom, he says, dwelt in Leucas.3 But in particular one might believe Hesiod when he says concerning them: ““For verily Locrus was chieftain of the peoples of the Leleges, whom once Zeus the son of Cronus, who knoweth devices imperishable, gave to Deucalion—peoples4 picked out of earth”;
”5 for by his etymology6 he seems to me to hint that from earliest times they were a collection of mixed peoples and that this was why the tribe disappeared. And the same might be said of the Caucones, since now they are nowhere to be found, although in earlier times they were settled in several places.
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1 5. 2. 4.
2 Only fragments of this work are now extant (see Didot Edition, Vol. IV, pp. 219-296).
3 Now Santa Maura (cp. 10. 2. 2).
4 In the Greek word for “peoples” (λαούς) Hesoid alludes to the Greek word for “stones” (λᾶας). Pindar (Olymp. 9. 46 ff.) clearly derives the former word from the latter: “Pyrrha and Deucalion, without bed of marriage, founded a Stone Race, who were called Laoi.” One might now infer that the resemblance of the two words gave rise to the myth of the stones.
5 Hes. Fr. 141.3 (Paulson
6 That is, of “Lelges.” In the Greek the root leg appears in (1) “Leleges.” (2) “picked,” and (3) “collection.”
Strabo. ed. H. L. Jones, The Geography of Strabo. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924.
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