τὸν Λυκόοργος ἔπεφνε δόλῳ, οὔτι κράτεΐ γε,
and the terms employed appear to indicate a military inferiority: which accords with the probable relation of the Arcadians, as Pelasgi, to their Hellenic neighbours. And this again corresponds with the close of the story; in which Nestor, fighting on the part of the Pylians who were Achæan, and therefore Hellenic, conquers the Arcadian chieftain Ereuthalion (Il. vi. 132-56).
It may be remarked once for all, that this military inferiority is not to be understood as if the Pelasgi were cowards, but simply as implying that they gave way before tribes of more marked military genius or habits than themselves; as at Hastings the Saxons did before the Normans; or as the Russians did in the late war of 1854-6 before the Western armies.
Lastly, the δῖος applied to Ereuthalion (Il. v. 319), accords with the use of that epithet for the Pelasgi elsewhere.
Thus a number of indications from Homer, slight when taken separately, but more considerable when combined, and drawn from _all_ the passages in which Homer refers to Arcadia, converge upon the supposition that the Arcadians were a Pelasgian people.
They are supported by the whole stream of later tradition; which placed Lycaon, son of Pelasgus, in Arcadia, which uniformly represented the Arcadians as autochthonic[158], and which made them competitors with the Argives for the honour of having given to the Pelasgians their original seat in the Peloponnesus.
Here too philology steps in, and lends us some small aid. The name of Προσέληνοι, which the Arcadians took to themselves, and which is assumed to mean older than the moon, appears, when so understood, to express a very forced idea: it is difficult indeed to conceive how such a name could even creep into use. But if we refer its origin to πρὸ and Σελλοὶ or Σέλληνες, it then becomes the simple indication of the historical fact we are looking for, namely, that they, a Pelasgic population, occupied Arcadia before any of the Hellic or Sellic races had come into the Peloponnesus.
From its rich pastures, Arcadia was originally well adapted for Pelasgian inhabitants. Defended by mountains, it offered, as Attica did through the poverty of its soil, an asylum to the refugees of that race, when dispossessed from other still more fertile, and perhaps also more accessible tracts of the Peloponnesus[159]. Hence it is easy to account both for its original Pelasgian character, and for the long retention of it.