Herodotus states that the Hellas of his day was formerly called Πελασγία[364]: gives to the Peloponnesian women of the era of Danaus the name of Πελασγιωτίδες γυναῖκες[365]: he denominates the Arcadians Πελασγοὶ Ἀρκάδες[366], the people of what was afterwards Achaia Πελασγοὶ Αἰγιαλέες[367], the Athenians Πελασγοὶ Κραναοὶ[368], whom also he describes as autochthonic[369]: and he shows, that recollections of the Pelasgian worship were preserved in his day at Dodona[370]. He furthermore mentions the Πελασγικὸν τεῖχος[371] at Athens; and he places the Pelasgian race in Samothrace, and Lemnos, and mentions their settlements upon the Hellespont, named Placia and Scylace.
Thucydides describes the spot or building called Πελασγικὸν under the Acropolis at Athens, the very situation, in which the original town would in all likelihood be placed for safety. This historian also sustains, with the weight of his judgment, the opinion that in pre-Hellenic times the prevailing race and name in Greece were Pelasgic; κατὰ ἔθνη δὲ ἄλλα τε καὶ τὸ Πελασγικὸν ἐπὶ πλεῖστον[372].
It is true, that in another passage[373], among the races of the βάρβαροι, he enumerates the Pelasgi: but the epithet itself, which was wholly inapplicable to the heroic age, shows that he spoke with reference to the demarcation established in his own time, which made every thing barbarous that was not Greek, either geographically or by known derivation. Barbarian with him and his contemporaries meant simply foreign, with the addition of a strong dash of depreciation. The full-grown Hellenic character no longer owned kindred with the particular races, which nevertheless might have contributed, each in its own time and place, to the formation of that remarkable product. The relationship is, however, established by Thucydides himself; for he says these Pelasgi were of the same Tyrseni, who occupied Athens at an earlier period.
Theocritus, who flourished early in the third century B. C., has a passage where he distinguishes chronologically between different persons and races. He begins with the heroes of the Troica, and then goes back to the ἔτι πρότεροι, in which capacity he names the Lapithæ, the Deucalidæ, the Pelopids, and lastly the Ἄργεος ἄκρα Πελασγοί[374]. The word ἄκρα might mean either (1) the flower of Greece, or (2) the very oldest and earliest inhabitants of Greece[375]. Now as the Pelasgians were by no means the flower of Greece, we can only choose the latter meaning for this particular passage. The word Ἄργος is perhaps taken here in its largest sense[376].