Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/77

56 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. supreme deity of the Hellenes is invoked by Achylles under the name of Pelasgian and Dodonian Zeus.^ Thus, first Homer, then scores of later writers, bear witness to the fact that the worship of Zeus at Dodona was a Pelasgic worship, that Pelasgians were the founders of this famous sanctuary, and that Greek piety ever remained faithful to its shrine, even when more sumptuous temples rose at Olympia and elsewhere. The claim of the Dodonian oracle on the people's regard was of a kind which had nothing to do with magnificence ; it could boast a longer past, having been famous when the others were not ; hence the belief that he assuredly would be more inclined to hear and grant the prayers of the faithful where first a house had been erected to him. Besides the Epirotes, other nationalities had kept green the memory of the Pelasgians. Traces were held to exist of their passage in many districts of Hellas, Attica, Arcadia, and Argolis. At Athens more especially, around the Acropolis, was shown a wall roughly built of unsquared stones laid in mud, and still visible in such places as were uncovered by tufa or marble coatings, recalling to the mind the ramparts at Hissarlik and Tiryns. This was the Pelasgian wall ; and recent excavations, by removing the sod down to the rock, have laid bare consider- able fragments of it, and thus taught us what was the nature of works which the Greeks attributed to the Pelasgi. The Pelasgians were reputed to have been skilful builders ; and it may be that this is the signification of the word Twppijvoi or Twpenjvoi which we find sometimes added to or substituted for the appellation of Pelasgi ; its root contains a vocable common to Italians and Greeks. True, it is not employed in literary language, but it was retained in certain local dialects of Hellas, whilst Latin preserved it in the word turris} Hence they ruled that **Tyrrenian Pelasgi," or '* tower-builders," was one and the same thing. On the other hand, in the form HeXapyoi, storks, which is met with now and again, it is impossible to see aught but a posterior allusion to the repeated and distant voyages of these tribes, whose steps tradition followed from Thrace and Peloponnesus, to the northern coast of the Hadriatic, and the very heart of Central Italy. ^ Zev ava Awjovaic, IXcXaffycie (IHad^ xvi. 223). ^ The forms rv^ou:^ rvpptg, rvppog, rvpplZioy had not escaped the lexicographers. PhaVORINUS, S. v. rvpnug.