Leleges
Encyclopedia
The Leleges were one of the aboriginal peoples of southwest Anatolia
(compare "Pelasgians"), who were already there when the Indo-European Hellenes
emerged. The distinction between the Leleges and the Carians (another peoples living in south west Anatolia) is unclear. According to Homer the Leleges were a distinct Anatolian tribe Homer
. According to Herodotus the Leleges were an early name for the Carians, Herodotus
; and according to the fourth-century BCE historian Philippus of Theangela they were overcome by the Carians
, On Carians and Leleges, who suggested the Leleges had connections to Messenia
, in mainland Greece.
It is thought that the name Leleges is not an autonym, a name these people applied to themselves, in a long-submerged tongue. Instead, during the Bronze Age
the term lulahi was in use in the Luwian language
of the Hittites
in Anatolia
: in a Hittite cuneiform inscription priests and temple servants are directed to avoid conversing with lulahi and foreign merchants. It is surmised that the reference is to strangers. According to the suggestion of Vitaly Shevoroshkin
, applying the term to men of the lands that would become classical Caria
and Lycia
, "Leleges" would then be an attempt to transliterate lulahi into Greek.
Late traditions reported in Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke, and by Pausanias
, derive the name from an eponym
ous king Lelex
; a comparable etymology, memorializing a legendary founder, is provided by Greek mythographers for virtually every tribe of Hellenes: "Lelex and the Leleges, whatever their historical significance, have acted as a blank sheet on which to draw Lakonia
and all it means," observes Ken Dowden.
's Iliad
, the Leleges are allies of the Trojans (10.429), though they do not appear in the formal catalogue of allies
in Book II of the Iliad, and their homeland is not specified. They are distinguished from the Carians
, with whom some later writers confused them; they have a king, Altes, and a city Pedasus
which was sacked by Achilles
. The topographical name "Pedasus" occurs in several ancient places: near Cyzicus
, in the Troad on the Satniois River, in Caria
, as well as in Messenia
, according to Encyclopædia Britannica 1911. Gargara in the Troad was counted as Lelegian. Alcaeus (7th or 6th century BCE) calls Antandrus in the Troad "Lelegian", but later Herodotus
substitutes the epithet "Pelasgian", so perhaps the two designations were broadly synonymous for the Greeks.
Pherecydes of Leros
(ca 480) attributed to the Leleges the coast land of Caria, from Ephesus
to Phocaea
, with the islands of Samos
and Chios
, placing the true Carians farther south from Ephesus to Miletus
. If this statement derives from Pherecydes, both native and knowledgeable, it has great weight.
Pausanias
was reminded that the temple of the Goddess at Ephesus predated the Ionia
n colony there, when it was rededicated to the Goddess as Artemis
. He states with certainty that it antedated the Ionic immigration by many years, being older even than the oracular shrine at Dodona
. He says that the pre-Ionic inhabitants of the city were Leleges and Lydia
ns (with a predominance of the latter) and that, although Androclus
drove out of the land all those whom he found in the upper city, he did not interfere with those who dwelt about the sanctuary. By giving and receiving pledges he put these on a footing of neutrality. These remarks of Pausanias find confirmation in the form of the cult in historic times, centering on a many-breasted icon of the "Lady of Ephesus" whom Greeks called Artemis. Other cult aspects, being in all essentials non-Hellenic, suggest the indigenous cult was taken over by the Greek settlers.
Often historians assume, as a general rule, that autochthonous
inhabitants survive an invasion as an under-class where they do not retreat to mountain districts, so it is interesting to hear in Deipnosophistae
that Philippus of Theangela (a 4th century BCE historian) referred to Leleges still surviving as serfs of the "true Carians", and even later Strabo
attributes to the Leleges a distinctive group of deserted forts and tombs in Caria that were still known in his day as "Lelegean forts"; the Encyclopædia Britannica 1911 identified these as ruins that could still be traced ranging from the neighborhood of Theangela and Halicarnassus
as far north as Miletus, the southern limit of the "true Carians" of Pherecydes. Plutarch also implies the historic existence of Lelegian serfs at Tralles (now Aydin
) in the interior.
ic catalogue places "Leleges" in Deucalion
's mythicized and archaic time in Locris
in central Greece. Locris is also the refuge of some of the Pelasgian inhabitants forced from Boeotia
by Cadmus
and his Phoenician adventurers. But not until the 4th century BCE does any other writer place Leleges anywhere west of the Aegean. But the confusion of the Leleges with the Carians (immigrant conquerors akin to Lydians
and Mysians
) which first appears in a Cretan legend (quoted by Herodotus, but repudiated, as he says, by the Carians themselves) and is repeated by Callisthenes
, Apollodorus
and other later writers, led easily to the suggestion of Callisthenes, that Leleges joined the Carians in their (half legendary) raids on the coasts of Greece.
Herodotus (1.171) says that the Leleges were a people who in old times dwelt in the islands of the Aegean and were subject to Minos
of Crete (one of the historic references that led Sir Arthur Evans
to name the pre-Hellenic Cretan culture "Minoan
"); and that they were driven from their homes by the Dorians and Ionians, after which they took refuge in Caria and were named Carians. Herodotus was a Dorian Greek born in Caria himself.
Meanwhile, other writers from the 4th century onwards claimed to discover them in Boeotia, west Acarnania (Leucas), and later again in Thessaly
, Euboea
, Megara
, Lacedaemon and Messenia
. In Messenia, they were reputed to have been immigrant founders of Pylos
, and were connected with the seafaring Taphians
and Teleboans of Homer, and distinguished from the Pelasgians. However, in Lacedaemon and in Leucas they were believed to be aboriginal and Dionysius of Halicarnassus
mentions that Leleges is the old name for the later Locrians
. These European Leleges must be interpreted in connection with the recurrence of place names like Pedasus, Physcus, Larymna and Abae, both in Caria, and in these "Lelegian" parts of Greece. Perhaps this is the result of some early migration; perhaps it is also the cause of these Lelegian theories; perhaps there was a widespread pre-Indo-European
culture that loosely linked these regions, a possibility on which much modern hypothesis has been constructed.
Aryan
Indo-European theorists of the 19th century who inspired modern heirs:
Anatolia
Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...
(compare "Pelasgians"), who were already there when the Indo-European Hellenes
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
emerged. The distinction between the Leleges and the Carians (another peoples living in south west Anatolia) is unclear. According to Homer the Leleges were a distinct Anatolian tribe Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
. According to Herodotus the Leleges were an early name for the Carians, Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
; and according to the fourth-century BCE historian Philippus of Theangela they were overcome by the Carians
Carians
The Carians were the ancient inhabitants of Caria in southwest Anatolia.-Historical accounts:It is not clear when the Carians enter into history. The definition is dependent on corresponding Caria and the Carians to the "Karkiya" or "Karkisa" mentioned in the Hittite records...
, On Carians and Leleges, who suggested the Leleges had connections to Messenia
Messenia
Messenia is a regional unit in the southwestern part of the Peloponnese region, one of 13 regions into which Greece has been divided by the Kallikratis plan, implemented 1 January 2011...
, in mainland Greece.
It is thought that the name Leleges is not an autonym, a name these people applied to themselves, in a long-submerged tongue. Instead, during the Bronze Age
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...
the term lulahi was in use in the Luwian language
Luwian language
Luwian is an extinct language of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. Luwian is closely related to Hittite, and was among the languages spoken during the second and first millennia BC by population groups in central and western Anatolia and northern Syria...
of the Hittites
Hittites
The Hittites were a Bronze Age people of Anatolia.They established a kingdom centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia c. the 18th century BC. The Hittite empire reached its height c...
in Anatolia
Anatolia
Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...
: in a Hittite cuneiform inscription priests and temple servants are directed to avoid conversing with lulahi and foreign merchants. It is surmised that the reference is to strangers. According to the suggestion of Vitaly Shevoroshkin
Vitaly Shevoroshkin
Vitaly Victorovich Shevoroshkin, Russ. Виталий Викторович Шеворошкин, is an American linguist of Russian origin, specializing in the study of ancient Mediterranean languages. In the 1960s he tried to decipher Carian inscriptions and proved that their language belonged to Anatolian languages. In...
, applying the term to men of the lands that would become classical Caria
Caria
Caria was a region of western Anatolia extending along the coast from mid-Ionia south to Lycia and east to Phrygia. The Ionian and Dorian Greeks colonized the west of it and joined the Carian population in forming Greek-dominated states there...
and Lycia
Lycia
Lycia Lycian: Trm̃mis; ) was a region in Anatolia in what are now the provinces of Antalya and Muğla on the southern coast of Turkey. It was a federation of ancient cities in the region and later a province of the Roman Empire...
, "Leleges" would then be an attempt to transliterate lulahi into Greek.
Late traditions reported in Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke, and by Pausanias
Pausanias (geographer)
Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece , a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsthand observations, and is a crucial link between classical...
, derive the name from an eponym
Eponym
An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...
ous king Lelex
Lelex
In Greek mythology, Lelex was a King of Laconia. He was married to the Naiad nymph, Cleochareia. He had several sons, including Myles, Polycaon, Pterelaus, and Cteson. The parentage of Lelex is variously stated...
; a comparable etymology, memorializing a legendary founder, is provided by Greek mythographers for virtually every tribe of Hellenes: "Lelex and the Leleges, whatever their historical significance, have acted as a blank sheet on which to draw Lakonia
Laconia
Laconia , also known as Lacedaemonia, is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Peloponnese. It is situated in the southeastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. Its administrative capital is Sparti...
and all it means," observes Ken Dowden.
Anatolia
In HomerHomer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
's Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
, the Leleges are allies of the Trojans (10.429), though they do not appear in the formal catalogue of allies
Catalogue of Ships
The Catalogue of Ships is a passage in Book 2 of Homer's Iliad , which lists the contingents of the Achaean army that sailed to Troy...
in Book II of the Iliad, and their homeland is not specified. They are distinguished from the Carians
Carians
The Carians were the ancient inhabitants of Caria in southwest Anatolia.-Historical accounts:It is not clear when the Carians enter into history. The definition is dependent on corresponding Caria and the Carians to the "Karkiya" or "Karkisa" mentioned in the Hittite records...
, with whom some later writers confused them; they have a king, Altes, and a city Pedasus
Pedasus
Pedasus was the name of several places in Greek mythology. There was a Pedasus in the Troad, on the Satnioeis river, said to be inhabited by a tribe called the Leleges. During the Trojan War, this Pedasus was ruled over by a certain king named Altes, and sacked by Achilles...
which was sacked by Achilles
Achilles
In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....
. The topographical name "Pedasus" occurs in several ancient places: near Cyzicus
Cyzicus
Cyzicus was an ancient town of Mysia in Anatolia in the current Balıkesir Province of Turkey. It was located on the shoreward side of the present Kapıdağ Peninsula , a tombolo which is said to have originally been an island in the Sea of Marmara only to be connected to the mainland in historic...
, in the Troad on the Satniois River, in Caria
Caria
Caria was a region of western Anatolia extending along the coast from mid-Ionia south to Lycia and east to Phrygia. The Ionian and Dorian Greeks colonized the west of it and joined the Carian population in forming Greek-dominated states there...
, as well as in Messenia
Messenia
Messenia is a regional unit in the southwestern part of the Peloponnese region, one of 13 regions into which Greece has been divided by the Kallikratis plan, implemented 1 January 2011...
, according to Encyclopædia Britannica 1911. Gargara in the Troad was counted as Lelegian. Alcaeus (7th or 6th century BCE) calls Antandrus in the Troad "Lelegian", but later Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
substitutes the epithet "Pelasgian", so perhaps the two designations were broadly synonymous for the Greeks.
Pherecydes of Leros
Pherecydes of Leros
Pherecydes of Leros was a Greek mythographer and logographer. He came from the island of Leros. Pherecydes spent the greater part of his working life in Athens, and so he was also called Pherecydes of Athens: the encyclopedic Byzantine Suda consider Pherecydes of Athens and of Leros...
(ca 480) attributed to the Leleges the coast land of Caria, from Ephesus
Ephesus
Ephesus was an ancient Greek city, and later a major Roman city, on the west coast of Asia Minor, near present-day Selçuk, Izmir Province, Turkey. It was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League during the Classical Greek era...
to Phocaea
Phocaea
Phocaea, or Phokaia, was an ancient Ionian Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia. Greek colonists from Phocaea founded the colony of Massalia in 600 BC, Emporion in 575 BC and Elea in 540 BC.-Geography:Phocaea was the northernmost...
, with the islands of Samos
Samos Island
Samos is a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese, and off the coast of Asia Minor, from which it is separated by the -wide Mycale Strait. It is also a separate regional unit of the North Aegean region, and the only municipality of the regional...
and Chios
Chios
Chios is the fifth largest of the Greek islands, situated in the Aegean Sea, seven kilometres off the Asia Minor coast. The island is separated from Turkey by the Chios Strait. The island is noted for its strong merchant shipping community, its unique mastic gum and its medieval villages...
, placing the true Carians farther south from Ephesus to Miletus
Miletus
Miletus was an ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia , near the mouth of the Maeander River in ancient Caria...
. If this statement derives from Pherecydes, both native and knowledgeable, it has great weight.
Pausanias
Pausanias (geographer)
Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece , a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsthand observations, and is a crucial link between classical...
was reminded that the temple of the Goddess at Ephesus predated the Ionia
Ionia
Ionia is an ancient region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey, the region nearest İzmir, which was historically Smyrna. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements...
n colony there, when it was rededicated to the Goddess as Artemis
Artemis
Artemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name and indeed the goddess herself was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron: "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals"...
. He states with certainty that it antedated the Ionic immigration by many years, being older even than the oracular shrine at Dodona
Dodona
Dodona in Epirus in northwestern Greece, was an oracle devoted to a Mother Goddess identified at other sites with Rhea or Gaia, but here called Dione, who was joined and partly supplanted in historical times by the Greek god Zeus.The shrine of Dodona was regarded as the oldest Hellenic oracle,...
. He says that the pre-Ionic inhabitants of the city were Leleges and Lydia
Lydia
Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian....
ns (with a predominance of the latter) and that, although Androclus
Androclus
Androcles , is the name given by some sources to the main character of a common folktale that is included in the Aarne-Thompson classification system as type 156. The story reappeared in the Middle Ages as "The Shepherd and the Lion" and was then ascribed to Aesop...
drove out of the land all those whom he found in the upper city, he did not interfere with those who dwelt about the sanctuary. By giving and receiving pledges he put these on a footing of neutrality. These remarks of Pausanias find confirmation in the form of the cult in historic times, centering on a many-breasted icon of the "Lady of Ephesus" whom Greeks called Artemis. Other cult aspects, being in all essentials non-Hellenic, suggest the indigenous cult was taken over by the Greek settlers.
Often historians assume, as a general rule, that autochthonous
Indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....
inhabitants survive an invasion as an under-class where they do not retreat to mountain districts, so it is interesting to hear in Deipnosophistae
Deipnosophistae
The Deipnosophistae may be translated as The Banquet of the Learned or Philosophers at Dinner or The Gastronomers...
that Philippus of Theangela (a 4th century BCE historian) referred to Leleges still surviving as serfs of the "true Carians", and even later Strabo
Strabo
Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...
attributes to the Leleges a distinctive group of deserted forts and tombs in Caria that were still known in his day as "Lelegean forts"; the Encyclopædia Britannica 1911 identified these as ruins that could still be traced ranging from the neighborhood of Theangela and Halicarnassus
Halicarnassus
Halicarnassus was an ancient Greek city at the site of modern Bodrum in Turkey. It was located in southwest Caria on a picturesque, advantageous site on the Ceramic Gulf. The city was famous for the tomb of Mausolus, the origin of the word mausoleum, built between 353 BC and 350 BC, and...
as far north as Miletus, the southern limit of the "true Carians" of Pherecydes. Plutarch also implies the historic existence of Lelegian serfs at Tralles (now Aydin
Aydin
Aydın is a city in and the seat of Aydın Province in Turkey's Aegean Region. The city is located at the heart of the lower valley of Büyük Menderes River at a commanding position for the region extending from the uplands of the valley down to the seacoast...
) in the interior.
Greece and the Aegean
A single passage in the fragmentary HesiodHesiod
Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...
ic catalogue places "Leleges" in Deucalion
Deucalion
In Greek mythology Deucalion was a son of Prometheus and Pronoia. The anger of Zeus was ignited by the hubris of the Pelasgians, and he decided to put an end to the Bronze Age. Lycaon, the king of Arcadia, had sacrificed a boy to Zeus, who was appalled by this savage offering...
's mythicized and archaic time in Locris
Locris
Locris was a region of ancient Greece, the homeland of the Locrians, made up of three distinct districts.-Locrian tribe:...
in central Greece. Locris is also the refuge of some of the Pelasgian inhabitants forced from Boeotia
Boeotia
Boeotia, also spelled Beotia and Bœotia , is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Central Greece. It was also a region of ancient Greece. Its capital is Livadeia, the second largest city being Thebes.-Geography:...
by Cadmus
Cadmus
Cadmus or Kadmos , in Greek mythology was a Phoenician prince, the son of king Agenor and queen Telephassa of Tyre and the brother of Phoenix, Cilix and Europa. He was originally sent by his royal parents to seek out and escort his sister Europa back to Tyre after she was abducted from the shores...
and his Phoenician adventurers. But not until the 4th century BCE does any other writer place Leleges anywhere west of the Aegean. But the confusion of the Leleges with the Carians (immigrant conquerors akin to Lydians
Lydians
The Lydians were the inhabitants of Lydia, a region in western Anatolia, who spoke the distinctive Lydian language, an Indo-European language of the Anatolian group....
and Mysians
Mysians
Mysians were the inhabitants of Mysia, a region in northwestern Asia Minor.-Origins according to ancient authors:Their first mention is by Homer, in his list of Trojans allies in the Iliad, and according to whom the Mysians fought in the Trojan War on the side of Troy, under the command of Chromis...
) which first appears in a Cretan legend (quoted by Herodotus, but repudiated, as he says, by the Carians themselves) and is repeated by Callisthenes
Callisthenes
Callisthenes of Olynthus was a Greek historian. He was the son of Hero and Proxenus of Atarneus, which made him the great nephew of Aristotle by his sister Arimneste. They first met when Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great...
, Apollodorus
Apollodorus
Apollodorus of Athens son of Asclepiades, was a Greek scholar and grammarian. He was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon, Panaetius the Stoic, and the grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace...
and other later writers, led easily to the suggestion of Callisthenes, that Leleges joined the Carians in their (half legendary) raids on the coasts of Greece.
Herodotus (1.171) says that the Leleges were a people who in old times dwelt in the islands of the Aegean and were subject to Minos
Minos
In Greek mythology, Minos was a king of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa. Every year he made King Aegeus pick seven men and seven women to go to Daedalus' creation, the labyrinth, to be eaten by The Minotaur. After his death, Minos became a judge of the dead in Hades. The Minoan civilization of Crete...
of Crete (one of the historic references that led Sir Arthur Evans
Arthur Evans
Sir Arthur John Evans FRS was a British archaeologist most famous for unearthing the palace of Knossos on the Greek island of Crete and for developing the concept of Minoan civilization from the structures and artifacts found there and elsewhere throughout eastern Mediterranean...
to name the pre-Hellenic Cretan culture "Minoan
Minoan civilization
The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age civilization that arose on the island of Crete and flourished from approximately the 27th century BC to the 15th century BC. It was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of the British archaeologist Arthur Evans...
"); and that they were driven from their homes by the Dorians and Ionians, after which they took refuge in Caria and were named Carians. Herodotus was a Dorian Greek born in Caria himself.
Meanwhile, other writers from the 4th century onwards claimed to discover them in Boeotia, west Acarnania (Leucas), and later again in Thessaly
Thessaly
Thessaly is a traditional geographical region and an administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, and appears thus in Homer's Odyssey....
, Euboea
Euboea
Euboea is the second largest Greek island in area and population, after Crete. The narrow Euripus Strait separates it from Boeotia in mainland Greece. In general outline it is a long and narrow, seahorse-shaped island; it is about long, and varies in breadth from to...
, Megara
Megara
Megara is an ancient city in Attica, Greece. It lies in the northern section of the Isthmus of Corinth opposite the island of Salamis, which belonged to Megara in archaic times, before being taken by Athens. Megara was one of the four districts of Attica, embodied in the four mythic sons of King...
, Lacedaemon and Messenia
Messenia
Messenia is a regional unit in the southwestern part of the Peloponnese region, one of 13 regions into which Greece has been divided by the Kallikratis plan, implemented 1 January 2011...
. In Messenia, they were reputed to have been immigrant founders of Pylos
Pylos
Pylos , historically known under its Italian name Navarino, is a town and a former municipality in Messenia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Pylos-Nestoras, of which it is the seat and a municipal unit. It was the capital of the former...
, and were connected with the seafaring Taphians
Taphians
In Homeric Greece, the islands of Taphos lay in the Ionian Sea off the coast of Acarnania in northwestern Greece, home of sea-going and piratical inhabitants, the Taphians...
and Teleboans of Homer, and distinguished from the Pelasgians. However, in Lacedaemon and in Leucas they were believed to be aboriginal and Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, who flourished during the reign of Caesar Augustus. His literary style was Attistic — imitating Classical Attic Greek in its prime.-Life:...
mentions that Leleges is the old name for the later Locrians
Locrians
The Locrians were an ancient Greek tribe in Greece. The Locrians spoke the Locrian dialect, a Doric-Northwest dialect, which indicates that they may have been relatives of the Dorians. They inhabited the ancient region of Locris in Central Greece....
. These European Leleges must be interpreted in connection with the recurrence of place names like Pedasus, Physcus, Larymna and Abae, both in Caria, and in these "Lelegian" parts of Greece. Perhaps this is the result of some early migration; perhaps it is also the cause of these Lelegian theories; perhaps there was a widespread pre-Indo-European
Neolithic Europe
Neolithic Europe refers to a prehistoric period in which Neolithic technology was present in Europe. This corresponds roughly to a time between 7000 BC and c. 1700 BC...
culture that loosely linked these regions, a possibility on which much modern hypothesis has been constructed.
Aryan
Aryan
Aryan is an English language loanword derived from Sanskrit ārya and denoting variously*In scholarly usage:**Indo-Iranian languages *in dated usage:**the Indo-European languages more generally and their speakers...
Indo-European theorists of the 19th century who inspired modern heirs:
- H. Kiepert. "Über den Volksstamm der Leleges", (in Monatsberichte Berliner Akademie, 1861, p. 114) asserted that the Leleges were an aboriginal people and linked them to IllyriansIllyriansThe Illyrians were a group of tribes who inhabited part of the western Balkans in antiquity and the south-eastern coasts of the Italian peninsula...
. - K. W. Deimling. Die Leleger (Leipzig, 1862), places their origins in southwest Asia MinorAsia MinorAsia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...
, and brings them thence to Greece, essentially repeating the classical Greek view. - G. F. Unger. "Hellas in Thessalien," in Philologus, supplement. ii. (1863), made them PhoeniciaPhoeniciaPhoenicia , was an ancient civilization in Canaan which covered most of the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. Several major Phoenician cities were built on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550...
n. - E. Curtius. History of Greece, (vol. i) even distinguished a "Lelegian" phase of nascent Aegean culture.