Oil the Early Kings of Attica. 365 I. 57. and bad been employed to build tbe wall of the Acro- polis, were not themselves the Athenian or Attic people. Different opinions prevailed as to their origin ; some thought they came from Thessaly, others from Italy ^^; but that they were advencEy who had been rewarded for their labour in building the wall by the allotment of lands, and expelled through jealousy or resentment, (Her. 6, 137) was agreed by all. And though Herodotus himself does speak of the Attic nation as being Pelasgic, i. 57, and even calls them HeXaayoL Kpavaoi 8, 44, I think any one who reflects on the absence of all historical monuments by which the use of the various names which he there supposes the Athenians successively to have borne, could be established, must con- clude that he is not speaking from historical evidence, but from the assumption that poetical synonymes were national names. This was the reason for supposing the Athenians to have been called Cecropidae and Cranai. And a similar want of historical evidence leads us to infer that when he calls the Athenians Pelasgi and wdien the Greeks alleged (Her. 7. 94^^) that the lonians had been called HeXaay 01 'AiyiaXee^^ it was only because they supposed all Greece to have been once called Pelasgia. As far as we know any- thing of the Pelasgic language, its affinities seem to have been to the Doric and ^olic, and the strong contrast in which from ancient times (Her. i. 56) Dorian and Ionian stood is hardly intelligible, if the lonians were also Pelas- gians'^'^. Those who adopt the opinion that the original population of Attica was Pelasgic find a difficulty in explaining whence die lonians came. They appear in Attic history, says Miil- ler, "as if they had fallen from the skies (Dorier i. 11), and he supposes them to have detached themselves from some Northern tribe. Historically they are known in the following regions. Their occupation of the northern coast of the Pelo- 2' See Siebilis ad Paus. i. 28. - oj's "Er]ues: Xeyouo-i — § 95 ws 'EWijucov yo9 speaking of the iEolians who were also alleged to be Pelasgians. 23 It is a probable conjecture of Wachsmuth (ReW. Alt. i. 48) that the Phaeacians, i.e. Corcyreans were lonians. The division into twelve Od. o', 390, is characteristic of the Ionian states.
