Pelasgian

"Then, all unknowing of Pelasgian art / and crimes so huge, the story we demand."

"Then schooled in cunning and Pelasgian sleights, / his hands unshackled to the stars he spread:"

It seems evident that the Hellenes much excelled the Pelasgians in the spirit of enterprise and in military accomplishments.

In Homer the Pelasgians¹ are of little importance. They are inhabitants of Asia Minor, where they possess a Larissa, and fight in the ranks of the Trojan army. We also hear of Pelasgi among the inhabitants of Crete.

1869, Journal of the Ethnological Society of London, New Series, Volume 1, Ethnological Society of London, Trübner and Co. page 324, Pelasgian, therefore, is regarded by him as convertible with Illyrian, and that with Gueg, subject to modifications of Tosk and relations therewith.

[…]Malte-Brun described Pelasgian as a primitive version of Greek, and distinguished it from Illyrian, which he regarded as a branch of the Thracian language.

The very solemn and ancient observance of her^([Demeter's]) worship in Attica, which was so eminently a Pelasgian state in the time of Homer, entirely accords with the indications of the Homeric text.

Croesus learns that of the Spartans and the Athenians, the one ethnos, the Spartans, was Dorian, the other, the Athenians, was Ionian; the one (obviously Athenians) were Pelasgian of old, the other (the Dorians) were Greek (Hellenikon).

Until recently, the investigation of Pelasgian language and culture was treated as a special field of Indo-European studies because the majority of scholars were convinced that the pre–Greek population of Greece must have been of Indo-European ethnic stock.