heirs would never cease from their rule. Then after this he gave
thought to inquire which people of the Hellenes he should esteem the
most powerful and gain over to himself as friends. And inquiring he
found that the Lacedemonians and the Athenians had the pre-eminence,
the first of the Dorian and the others of the Ionian race. For these
were the most eminent races in ancient time, the second being a
Pelasgian and the first a Hellenic race: and the one never migrated
from its place in any direction, while the other was very exceedingly
given to wanderings; for in the reign of Deucalion this race dwelt in
Pthiotis, and in the time of Doros the son of Hellen in the land lying
below Ossa and Olympos, which is called Histiaiotis; and when it was
driven from Histiaiotis by the sons of Cadmos, it dwelt in Pindos and
was called Makednian; and thence it moved afterwards to Dryopis, and
from Dryopis it came finally to Peloponnesus, and began to be called
Dorian.

57. What language however the Pelasgians used to speak I am not able
with certainty to say. But if one must pronounce judging by those that
still remain of the Pelasgians who dwelt in the city of Creston[60]
above the Tyrsenians, and who were once neighbours of the race now
called Dorian, dwelling then in the land which is now called
Thessaliotis, and also by those that remain of the Pelasgians who
settled at Plakia and Skylake in the region of the Hellespont, who
before that had been settlers with the Athenians,[61] and of the
natives of the various other towns which are really Pelasgian, though
they have lost the name,--if one must pronounce judging by these, the
Pelasgians used to speak a Barbarian language. If therefore all the
Pelasgian race was such as these, then the Attic race, being
Pelasgian, at the same time when it changed and became Hellenic,
unlearnt also its language. For the people of Creston do not speak the