Lastly, the reputed derivation of the oracle at Dodona from Egypt harmonises with the Pelasgian character assigned to that seat of worship by Homer. The tradition to this effect reported by Herodotus[251] was Greek, and not Egyptian: it was obtained by him on the spot: and if Homer’s countrymen partook of the poet’s reserve, and his dislike of assigning a foreign source to anything established in Greece, a presumption arises that this particular statement would not have been made, had it not rested on a respectable course of traditionary authority.
It may however be asked, if the Pelasgians are to be regarded as Greeks, and as the base of the Greek nation, and if Homer was familiar with their name and position in that character, how happens it that he never calls the Greeks Pelasgians, as he calls them Danaans, Argeians, and Achæans, and never even gives us in the Iliad a Pelasgian race or tribe by name as numbered among the Greeks?
Now it is not a sufficient answer to say, that the Pelasgian race and name were falling under eclipse in the age of Homer; for we shall see reason hereafter to suppose that the appellations of Danaan and Argeian were likewise (so to speak) preterite, though not yet obsolete, appellations; still Homer employs them freely.
Their case is essentially different, however, as we shall find, from that of the Pelasgians, since those two names do not imply either any blood different from that of the Achæan or properly Greek body, or any particular race which had supplied an element in its composition: one of these the Pelasgian name certainly does imply. Those names too, without doubt, would not be used, unless they shed glory on the Greeks: the Pelasgian name could have no such treasure to dispense.
It should, however, here be observed, that an examination presently to be made of the force of the Argeian name will help us to account for the disappearance from Greece of the Pelasgian name, which it may perhaps have supplanted.
Let me observe, that if the Pelasgians did, in point of fact, supply an element to the Greek nationality, which had, while still remaining perceptibly distinct, become politically subordinate in Homer’s time, that is precisely the case in which he would be sure not to apply the name to the Greeks at large, nor to any Greek state, as its application could not under such circumstances be popular. His non-employment of it, therefore, for Greeks is _pro tanto_ a confirmation to the general argument of these pages.