From Sicily came Illyrius, Celtus and Galas
"According to the Illyrian Wars of Appian, Illyrius was the son of the Cyclops Polyphemus and his wife Galatea with siblings Celtus and Galas. The children of Polyphemus all migrated from Sicily and ruled over the peoples named after them, the Celts, the Illyrians, and the Galatians. This particular genealogy was most likely composed by the ancient Greek founders of Epidamnus (Corinthians and Corcyrans) and preserved in Appian's work."
Illyrius - Wikipedia
"The earliest mentions of the Bryges are contained in the historical writings of Herodotus, who relates them to Phrygians, stating that according to the Macedonians, the Bryges "changed their name" to Phryges after migrating into Anatolia, a movement which is thought to have happened between 1200 BC and 800 BC perhaps due to the Bronze Age collapse, particularly the fall of the Hittite Empire and the power vacuum that was created."
Bryges - Wikipedia
Bryges/Broges/Briges in Gaul
List of ancient Celtic peoples and tribes - Wikipedia
Large, detailed map
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Droysens_Hist_Handatlas_S16_Gallien.jpg
"They say that the country [Illyria] received its name from Illyrius, the son of Polyphemus; for the Cyclops Polyphemus and his wife, Galatea, had three sons, Celtus, Illyrius, and Galas, all of whom migrated from Sicily; and the nations called Celts, Illyrians, and Galatians took their origin from them. Among the many myths prevailing among many peoples this seems to me the most plausible. Illyrius had six sons, Encheleus, Autarieus, Dardanus, Mædus, Taulas, and Perrhæbus, also daughters, Partho, Daortho, Dassaro, and others, from whom sprang the Taulantii, the Perrhæbi, the Enchelees, the Autarienses, the Dardani, the Partheni, the Dassaretii, and the Darsii. Autarieus had a son Pannonius, or Pæon, and the latter had sons, Scordiscus and Triballus, from whom nations bearing similar names were derived."
Appianus, Illyrian Wars | Exploring Celtic Civilizations
Racial photographs from the Egyptian monuments, Dardanians, p. 36
By W. M. Flinders Petrie
Racial photographs from the Egyptian monuments : Petrie, W. M. Flinders
"The present mode of stating the matter may be quoted from Dr. Walter Leaf's Troy, 16 f., or in his recent book on Homer and History. I quote the latter, 72 f.: "The Dardanians who founded the Troy of the Mycenaean age were — and this is hardly questioned now — a branch of that Phrygian stock, who were themselves sharers in the great thrust of the nations from the north. The Phrygian language was closely akin to the Greek, and the two nations had doubtless come down together, or nearly at the same time, from the Danube valley. The Dardanians had taken the southeastern road, while the Achaeans passed on southwestwards." Two closely related tribes of the Phrygian stock that settled in the Danube valley appear in the earliest European record, and do not disappear from history until after the Slavic invasion of the seventh century a.d."
The Wanderings of Dardanus and the Dardani : Macurdy, Grace Harriet
"First of all, then, it is generally agreed that when Troy was taken vengeance was wreaked upon the other Trojans, but that two, Aeneas and Antenor, were spared all the penalties of war by the Achivi, owing to long-standing claims of hospitality, and because they had always advocated peace and the giving back of Helen. They then experienced various vicissitudes. Antenor, with a company of Eneti who had been expelled from Paphlagonia in a revolution and were looking for a home and a leader —for they had lost their king, Pylaemenes, at Troy—came to the inmost bay of the Adriatic. There, driving out the Euganei, who dwelt between the sea and the Alps, the Eneti and Trojans took possession of those lands. And in fact the place where they first landed is called Troy, and the district is therefore known as Trojan, while the people as a whole are called the Veneti. Aeneas, driven from home by a similar misfortune, but guided by fate to undertakings of greater consequence, came first to Macedonia; thence was carried, in his quest of a place of settlement, to Sicily; and from Sicily laid his course towards the land of Laurentum. This place too is called Troy. Landing there, the Trojans, as men who, after their all but immeasurable wanderings, had nothing left but their swords and ships, were driving booty from the fields, when King Latinus and the Aborigines, who then occupied that country, rushed down from their city and their fields to repel with arms the violence of the invaders."--Livy, The History of Rome
Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 1, chapter 1
"According to Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain (1136), he led the descendants of the Trojans who fled with Antenor after the Trojan War and settled on the coasts of the Tyrrhenian Sea. After Brutus, a descendant of the Trojan prince Aeneas, had been exiled from Italy and liberated the enslaved Trojans in Greece, he encountered Corineus and his people, who joined him in his travels. In Gaul, Corineus provoked a war with Goffarius Pictus, king of Aquitania, by hunting in his forests without permission, and killed thousands single-handedly with his battle-axe. After defeating Goffarius, the Trojans crossed to the island of Albion, which Brutus renamed Britain after himself."
Corineus - Wikipedia
History of Britain: Text
Neglected British history, by W.M. Flinders Petrie
"When they had revictualled their ships, they made sail for the Columns of Hercules, where they saw many of the monsters of the deep called Sirens, which surrounded the ships and well-nigh overwhelmed them. Howbeit, they made shift to escape, and came to the Tyrrhene sea, where they found nigh the shore four generations born of the exiles from Troy, who had borne Antenor company in his flight. … Then came they to Aquitaine, and entering into the mouth of the Loire, cast anchor there. Here they abode seven days and explored the lie of the land. Goffarius Pictus then ruled in Aquitaine, and was King of the country … he re-embarked, and with a prosperous wind sought out the promised island, where he landed at last in safety at Totnes. At that time the name of the island was Albion, and of none was it inhabited save only of a few giants."--Geoffrey of Monmouth, Histories of the Kings of Britain
"There are certain persons in Cambria, whom you will find nowhere else, called Awenyddion... These prophets are found only among those Britons who are descended from the Trojans."
--Giraldus Cambrensis, Description of Wales
"The three National Pillars of the Isle of Britain. First, Hu Gadarn, [Hu the Mighty], who originally conducted the nation of the Cymry into the Isle of Britain. They came from the Summer-Country, which is called Deffrobani, (that is, the place where Constantinople now stands), and it was over the Hazy Sea, [the German Ocean], that they came to the Isle of Britain, and to Llydaw, [Armorica], where they continued.
…
The three Social Tribes of the Isle of Britain. The first was the nation of the Cymry, that came with Hu the Mighty into the isle of Britain, because he would not possess lands and dominion by fighting and pursuit, but through justice and in peace. The second was the tribe of the Lloegrwys [Loegrians], that came from the land of Gwasgwyn [Gascony], being descended from the primitive nation of the Cymry. The third were the Brython, who came from the land of Armorica, having their descent from the same stock with the Cymry. These were called the three Tribes of Peace, on account of their coming, with mutual consent, in peace and tranquillity: and these three tribes were descended from the original nation of the Cymry, and were of the same language and speech. "
The Triads No. II
"When and how did Keltic cease to be spoken in north Italy? That a Keltic dialect was spoken there before Latin is certain, and the general character of that Keltic dialect is also well known; that is to say, it belonged to that branch of Keltic known as p-Keltic, because it substituted, in part, labial plosives for the older Indo-European labio-velar plosives and also for the combination ku. Thus, like Welsh and Cornish ebol (b for older p), we have Keltic epo- in north Italy (Eporedia, Epona) in contrast with Irish ech, Venetic e.kupethari.s., ecupetaris, or even Umbrian ekvine."
--Whatmough, Dialects of Ancient Gaul
"It is possible that the Sicels and the Sicani of the Iron Age had consisted of an Illyrian population who (as with the Messapians) had imposed themselves on a native, Pre-Indo-European ("Mediterranean") population. Thucydides and other classical writers were aware of the traditions according to which the Sicels had once lived in Central Italy, east and even north of Rome. Thence they were dislodged by Umbrian and Sabine tribes, and finally crossed into Sicily. Their social organization appears to have been tribal, economically and agriculturally. According to Diodorus Siculus, after a series of conflicts with the Sicani, the river Salso was declared the boundary between their respective territories.
The common assumption is that the Sicels were more recent arrivals, had introduced the use of iron into Bronze Age Sicily and brought the domesticated horse.[citation needed] That would date their arrival on the island to the early 1st millennium BC. However, there is some evidence that the ethnonym may predate the Iron Age, based on the name Shekelesh given to one of the Sea Peoples in the Great Karnak Inscription in the 5th year of Merneptah's reign (c. 1207 BC). The name Shekelesh is also cited in a wall relief at Medinet Habu (Ramses III mortuary temple), with picture and writings describing the second invasion within a 30 years' period by the "sea peoples" in the 8th year of Ramses III's reign (1177 BC or 1186 BC, historians differ between these two dates). Eric Cline closely relates these two attacks on Egypt to the beginning of the Late Bronze Age collapse. Archaeological evidence points towards the Sicels' arrival on the island between the thirteenth and eleventh century BC."--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicels
"Shekelesh of the countries of the sea", Sicels of Sicily.
"Sherden of the sea", Sardinians (with the Nuraghe, round towers)
"Teresh of the sea", Tyrhennians.
--de Rouge, Sea Peoples
The Thalassocracies, who ruled the sea, from the missing books of Diodorus.
Eusebius: Chronicle (2) - translation
"From the fall of Troy (1172 B.C., according to Eusebios):
1. The Lydians or Maionians ruled the sea for 92 years (1172-1080)
2. Pelasgians, 85 years (1080-995)
3. Thracians, 79 years (995-916)
4. Phrygians, 25 years (916-891)
5. Rhodians, 23 years (891-868)
6. Cyprians, 33 years, (868-835)
7. Phoenicians, 45 years (835-790)
Working backwards from the last entry, we naturally find no difficulty in accepting the tradition of a Phoenician seapower at the end of the ninth century. Indeed, the only surprise is that this "thalassocracy" lasts no longer than it does. From the way in which Greek writers from Homer onwards represent Phcenicians as almost monopolizing Aegean trade before the rise of Miletos, one might expect their command of the sea to cover the whole of the dark age from the tenth century to the eighth.
Of the next power named--that of Cyprus--we know nothing relevant. Of the next, the Rhodians, one is not surprised to hear nautical prowess predicated at any time.
[58]
Strabo gives some details, probably from Kastor's account, of just such a "thalassocracy", when Rhodian mariners sailed far afield "many years before the foundation of the Olympic Games". But the idea of a Phrygian sea-power is astonishing, and Greek literature contains no other allusion to any such thing.
The three earliest entries, partly perhaps because we have a few other allusions to them, are still more puzzling.
One does not instinctively think of the Thracians as a nautical people, but there are various tales of their raiding by sea in early times, such as the story of Eumolpos, who invaded Attica from the sea side and helped the men of Eleusis against Erechtheus, king of Athens; or of Butes, son of the North Wind, whose piratical squadron raided Euboia and the coast of Thessaly, and whose descendants occupied Naxos for two hundred years 'before the Karians held it". And Samothrace is already "the Thracian Samos" in the Iliad.
But a difficulty arises; all these raids are explicitly dated before the Trojan War; for the Karian occupation of the Cyclades comes traditionally very soon after the war, and the Thracians had then already abandoned Naxos, owing to drought.
And so it is with the next entry.
About the Pelasgoi the air was already so thick with theories in ancient times that it is very difficult to make any statement about them that is not open to question. Originally they seem to have been a pre-Hellenic tribe (if Herodotos is right in his account of their language as spoken in his day) whose home was in the northern regions of Greece. Here was the only Pelasgian Land", Pelasgiotis, known to history; here was the Pelasgian Argos; and not so very far away was the sacred place of the "Pelasgian Zeus" of Dodona to whom Achilles prayed. In these regions they must have been neighbours of the first Achaians, who, by the time when the Catalogue of Ships in Iliad II was drawn up, appear to have taken complete possession both of lands, town, and shrine. Nothing of the Pelasgoi remains in Homer's Greece except their name, so far as our information goes; the Pelasgoi themselves seem to have
[59]
been pushed by gradual encroachments into the sea. But they were not extinct; they had taken to the sea under pressure of necessity, as any vigorous and virile race will, and Homer speaks of colonies of them in Crete and (apparently) in the Troad, in the latter of which regions they take their opportunity of striking a blow for King Priam against their old enemies the Achaioi. Fifth century historians knew of them also near Kyzikos, in Lemnos, Imbros, and Samothrace, in the peninsula of Chalkidike, and between the Strymon and the Axios rivers. Such a distribution of the scattered fragments of their nation is in itself sufficient testimony to their activity by sea.
There are also stories of Pelasgoi in Attica, and in Boiotia, the former of which is told with much circumstance by Herodotos and was believed by Thucydides; but it contains some suspicious features and may be a myth. It should be remembered that both these writers are deeply influenced by the "Pelasgian Theory" which can be traced back as far as the Hesiodic poets, and which equated Pelasgoi with "pre-Hellenic people" in general. Accordingly Hesiod or a poet of his school makes their eponym Pelasgos a hero of the aboriginal people of primitive Arkadia. It was a very natural theory to adopt with reference to a people who had anticipated the Greeks in so many regions; but it was a most fruitful source of misconceptions.
A Pelasgian "thalassocracy" in the Dark Age after the Trojan War is not impossible; but it would fall more naturally at an earlier date after they had taken to the sea and set out to conquer new homes, but before their nation was broken into fragments.
So we come to the "Lydian or Maionian" entry at the beginning of the list.
[60]
If this is indeed to be placed immediately after the Trojan War, it must be clearly identified with that development of sea-power on the Asian Coast which other Greek historians preferred to call Karian. This thalassocracy must in any case have been short-lived, since it was brought to an end by the great outpouring of people from Greece which founded Aidlis and Ionia. But if we are not to suppose that the Karian and Maionian sea-powers are alternative versions of the same thing, then the only Greek tradition of "Lydian" sea-power with which we are left are those concerning the migration of the Etruscans."
--A. R. Burn, Minoans, Philistines and Greeks
Now... according to Herodotos, the legendary King Kar, son of Zeus and Creta, founded Caria and named it after him, and his brothers Lydos and Mysos founded Lydia and Mysia.
But the question remains... who spoke Celtic?
"According to the Illyrian Wars of Appian, Illyrius was the son of the Cyclops Polyphemus and his wife Galatea with siblings Celtus and Galas. The children of Polyphemus all migrated from Sicily and ruled over the peoples named after them, the Celts, the Illyrians, and the Galatians. This particular genealogy was most likely composed by the ancient Greek founders of Epidamnus (Corinthians and Corcyrans) and preserved in Appian's work."
Illyrius - Wikipedia
"The earliest mentions of the Bryges are contained in the historical writings of Herodotus, who relates them to Phrygians, stating that according to the Macedonians, the Bryges "changed their name" to Phryges after migrating into Anatolia, a movement which is thought to have happened between 1200 BC and 800 BC perhaps due to the Bronze Age collapse, particularly the fall of the Hittite Empire and the power vacuum that was created."
Bryges - Wikipedia
Bryges/Broges/Briges in Gaul
List of ancient Celtic peoples and tribes - Wikipedia
Large, detailed map
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Droysens_Hist_Handatlas_S16_Gallien.jpg
"They say that the country [Illyria] received its name from Illyrius, the son of Polyphemus; for the Cyclops Polyphemus and his wife, Galatea, had three sons, Celtus, Illyrius, and Galas, all of whom migrated from Sicily; and the nations called Celts, Illyrians, and Galatians took their origin from them. Among the many myths prevailing among many peoples this seems to me the most plausible. Illyrius had six sons, Encheleus, Autarieus, Dardanus, Mædus, Taulas, and Perrhæbus, also daughters, Partho, Daortho, Dassaro, and others, from whom sprang the Taulantii, the Perrhæbi, the Enchelees, the Autarienses, the Dardani, the Partheni, the Dassaretii, and the Darsii. Autarieus had a son Pannonius, or Pæon, and the latter had sons, Scordiscus and Triballus, from whom nations bearing similar names were derived."
Appianus, Illyrian Wars | Exploring Celtic Civilizations
Racial photographs from the Egyptian monuments, Dardanians, p. 36
By W. M. Flinders Petrie
Racial photographs from the Egyptian monuments : Petrie, W. M. Flinders
"The present mode of stating the matter may be quoted from Dr. Walter Leaf's Troy, 16 f., or in his recent book on Homer and History. I quote the latter, 72 f.: "The Dardanians who founded the Troy of the Mycenaean age were — and this is hardly questioned now — a branch of that Phrygian stock, who were themselves sharers in the great thrust of the nations from the north. The Phrygian language was closely akin to the Greek, and the two nations had doubtless come down together, or nearly at the same time, from the Danube valley. The Dardanians had taken the southeastern road, while the Achaeans passed on southwestwards." Two closely related tribes of the Phrygian stock that settled in the Danube valley appear in the earliest European record, and do not disappear from history until after the Slavic invasion of the seventh century a.d."
The Wanderings of Dardanus and the Dardani : Macurdy, Grace Harriet
"First of all, then, it is generally agreed that when Troy was taken vengeance was wreaked upon the other Trojans, but that two, Aeneas and Antenor, were spared all the penalties of war by the Achivi, owing to long-standing claims of hospitality, and because they had always advocated peace and the giving back of Helen. They then experienced various vicissitudes. Antenor, with a company of Eneti who had been expelled from Paphlagonia in a revolution and were looking for a home and a leader —for they had lost their king, Pylaemenes, at Troy—came to the inmost bay of the Adriatic. There, driving out the Euganei, who dwelt between the sea and the Alps, the Eneti and Trojans took possession of those lands. And in fact the place where they first landed is called Troy, and the district is therefore known as Trojan, while the people as a whole are called the Veneti. Aeneas, driven from home by a similar misfortune, but guided by fate to undertakings of greater consequence, came first to Macedonia; thence was carried, in his quest of a place of settlement, to Sicily; and from Sicily laid his course towards the land of Laurentum. This place too is called Troy. Landing there, the Trojans, as men who, after their all but immeasurable wanderings, had nothing left but their swords and ships, were driving booty from the fields, when King Latinus and the Aborigines, who then occupied that country, rushed down from their city and their fields to repel with arms the violence of the invaders."--Livy, The History of Rome
Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 1, chapter 1
"According to Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain (1136), he led the descendants of the Trojans who fled with Antenor after the Trojan War and settled on the coasts of the Tyrrhenian Sea. After Brutus, a descendant of the Trojan prince Aeneas, had been exiled from Italy and liberated the enslaved Trojans in Greece, he encountered Corineus and his people, who joined him in his travels. In Gaul, Corineus provoked a war with Goffarius Pictus, king of Aquitania, by hunting in his forests without permission, and killed thousands single-handedly with his battle-axe. After defeating Goffarius, the Trojans crossed to the island of Albion, which Brutus renamed Britain after himself."
Corineus - Wikipedia
History of Britain: Text
Neglected British history, by W.M. Flinders Petrie
"When they had revictualled their ships, they made sail for the Columns of Hercules, where they saw many of the monsters of the deep called Sirens, which surrounded the ships and well-nigh overwhelmed them. Howbeit, they made shift to escape, and came to the Tyrrhene sea, where they found nigh the shore four generations born of the exiles from Troy, who had borne Antenor company in his flight. … Then came they to Aquitaine, and entering into the mouth of the Loire, cast anchor there. Here they abode seven days and explored the lie of the land. Goffarius Pictus then ruled in Aquitaine, and was King of the country … he re-embarked, and with a prosperous wind sought out the promised island, where he landed at last in safety at Totnes. At that time the name of the island was Albion, and of none was it inhabited save only of a few giants."--Geoffrey of Monmouth, Histories of the Kings of Britain
"There are certain persons in Cambria, whom you will find nowhere else, called Awenyddion... These prophets are found only among those Britons who are descended from the Trojans."
--Giraldus Cambrensis, Description of Wales
"The three National Pillars of the Isle of Britain. First, Hu Gadarn, [Hu the Mighty], who originally conducted the nation of the Cymry into the Isle of Britain. They came from the Summer-Country, which is called Deffrobani, (that is, the place where Constantinople now stands), and it was over the Hazy Sea, [the German Ocean], that they came to the Isle of Britain, and to Llydaw, [Armorica], where they continued.
…
The three Social Tribes of the Isle of Britain. The first was the nation of the Cymry, that came with Hu the Mighty into the isle of Britain, because he would not possess lands and dominion by fighting and pursuit, but through justice and in peace. The second was the tribe of the Lloegrwys [Loegrians], that came from the land of Gwasgwyn [Gascony], being descended from the primitive nation of the Cymry. The third were the Brython, who came from the land of Armorica, having their descent from the same stock with the Cymry. These were called the three Tribes of Peace, on account of their coming, with mutual consent, in peace and tranquillity: and these three tribes were descended from the original nation of the Cymry, and were of the same language and speech. "
The Triads No. II
"When and how did Keltic cease to be spoken in north Italy? That a Keltic dialect was spoken there before Latin is certain, and the general character of that Keltic dialect is also well known; that is to say, it belonged to that branch of Keltic known as p-Keltic, because it substituted, in part, labial plosives for the older Indo-European labio-velar plosives and also for the combination ku. Thus, like Welsh and Cornish ebol (b for older p), we have Keltic epo- in north Italy (Eporedia, Epona) in contrast with Irish ech, Venetic e.kupethari.s., ecupetaris, or even Umbrian ekvine."
--Whatmough, Dialects of Ancient Gaul
"It is possible that the Sicels and the Sicani of the Iron Age had consisted of an Illyrian population who (as with the Messapians) had imposed themselves on a native, Pre-Indo-European ("Mediterranean") population. Thucydides and other classical writers were aware of the traditions according to which the Sicels had once lived in Central Italy, east and even north of Rome. Thence they were dislodged by Umbrian and Sabine tribes, and finally crossed into Sicily. Their social organization appears to have been tribal, economically and agriculturally. According to Diodorus Siculus, after a series of conflicts with the Sicani, the river Salso was declared the boundary between their respective territories.
The common assumption is that the Sicels were more recent arrivals, had introduced the use of iron into Bronze Age Sicily and brought the domesticated horse.[citation needed] That would date their arrival on the island to the early 1st millennium BC. However, there is some evidence that the ethnonym may predate the Iron Age, based on the name Shekelesh given to one of the Sea Peoples in the Great Karnak Inscription in the 5th year of Merneptah's reign (c. 1207 BC). The name Shekelesh is also cited in a wall relief at Medinet Habu (Ramses III mortuary temple), with picture and writings describing the second invasion within a 30 years' period by the "sea peoples" in the 8th year of Ramses III's reign (1177 BC or 1186 BC, historians differ between these two dates). Eric Cline closely relates these two attacks on Egypt to the beginning of the Late Bronze Age collapse. Archaeological evidence points towards the Sicels' arrival on the island between the thirteenth and eleventh century BC."--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicels
"Shekelesh of the countries of the sea", Sicels of Sicily.
"Sherden of the sea", Sardinians (with the Nuraghe, round towers)
"Teresh of the sea", Tyrhennians.
--de Rouge, Sea Peoples
The Thalassocracies, who ruled the sea, from the missing books of Diodorus.
Eusebius: Chronicle (2) - translation
"From the fall of Troy (1172 B.C., according to Eusebios):
1. The Lydians or Maionians ruled the sea for 92 years (1172-1080)
2. Pelasgians, 85 years (1080-995)
3. Thracians, 79 years (995-916)
4. Phrygians, 25 years (916-891)
5. Rhodians, 23 years (891-868)
6. Cyprians, 33 years, (868-835)
7. Phoenicians, 45 years (835-790)
Working backwards from the last entry, we naturally find no difficulty in accepting the tradition of a Phoenician seapower at the end of the ninth century. Indeed, the only surprise is that this "thalassocracy" lasts no longer than it does. From the way in which Greek writers from Homer onwards represent Phcenicians as almost monopolizing Aegean trade before the rise of Miletos, one might expect their command of the sea to cover the whole of the dark age from the tenth century to the eighth.
Of the next power named--that of Cyprus--we know nothing relevant. Of the next, the Rhodians, one is not surprised to hear nautical prowess predicated at any time.
[58]
Strabo gives some details, probably from Kastor's account, of just such a "thalassocracy", when Rhodian mariners sailed far afield "many years before the foundation of the Olympic Games". But the idea of a Phrygian sea-power is astonishing, and Greek literature contains no other allusion to any such thing.
The three earliest entries, partly perhaps because we have a few other allusions to them, are still more puzzling.
One does not instinctively think of the Thracians as a nautical people, but there are various tales of their raiding by sea in early times, such as the story of Eumolpos, who invaded Attica from the sea side and helped the men of Eleusis against Erechtheus, king of Athens; or of Butes, son of the North Wind, whose piratical squadron raided Euboia and the coast of Thessaly, and whose descendants occupied Naxos for two hundred years 'before the Karians held it". And Samothrace is already "the Thracian Samos" in the Iliad.
But a difficulty arises; all these raids are explicitly dated before the Trojan War; for the Karian occupation of the Cyclades comes traditionally very soon after the war, and the Thracians had then already abandoned Naxos, owing to drought.
And so it is with the next entry.
About the Pelasgoi the air was already so thick with theories in ancient times that it is very difficult to make any statement about them that is not open to question. Originally they seem to have been a pre-Hellenic tribe (if Herodotos is right in his account of their language as spoken in his day) whose home was in the northern regions of Greece. Here was the only Pelasgian Land", Pelasgiotis, known to history; here was the Pelasgian Argos; and not so very far away was the sacred place of the "Pelasgian Zeus" of Dodona to whom Achilles prayed. In these regions they must have been neighbours of the first Achaians, who, by the time when the Catalogue of Ships in Iliad II was drawn up, appear to have taken complete possession both of lands, town, and shrine. Nothing of the Pelasgoi remains in Homer's Greece except their name, so far as our information goes; the Pelasgoi themselves seem to have
[59]
been pushed by gradual encroachments into the sea. But they were not extinct; they had taken to the sea under pressure of necessity, as any vigorous and virile race will, and Homer speaks of colonies of them in Crete and (apparently) in the Troad, in the latter of which regions they take their opportunity of striking a blow for King Priam against their old enemies the Achaioi. Fifth century historians knew of them also near Kyzikos, in Lemnos, Imbros, and Samothrace, in the peninsula of Chalkidike, and between the Strymon and the Axios rivers. Such a distribution of the scattered fragments of their nation is in itself sufficient testimony to their activity by sea.
There are also stories of Pelasgoi in Attica, and in Boiotia, the former of which is told with much circumstance by Herodotos and was believed by Thucydides; but it contains some suspicious features and may be a myth. It should be remembered that both these writers are deeply influenced by the "Pelasgian Theory" which can be traced back as far as the Hesiodic poets, and which equated Pelasgoi with "pre-Hellenic people" in general. Accordingly Hesiod or a poet of his school makes their eponym Pelasgos a hero of the aboriginal people of primitive Arkadia. It was a very natural theory to adopt with reference to a people who had anticipated the Greeks in so many regions; but it was a most fruitful source of misconceptions.
A Pelasgian "thalassocracy" in the Dark Age after the Trojan War is not impossible; but it would fall more naturally at an earlier date after they had taken to the sea and set out to conquer new homes, but before their nation was broken into fragments.
So we come to the "Lydian or Maionian" entry at the beginning of the list.
[60]
If this is indeed to be placed immediately after the Trojan War, it must be clearly identified with that development of sea-power on the Asian Coast which other Greek historians preferred to call Karian. This thalassocracy must in any case have been short-lived, since it was brought to an end by the great outpouring of people from Greece which founded Aidlis and Ionia. But if we are not to suppose that the Karian and Maionian sea-powers are alternative versions of the same thing, then the only Greek tradition of "Lydian" sea-power with which we are left are those concerning the migration of the Etruscans."
--A. R. Burn, Minoans, Philistines and Greeks
Now... according to Herodotos, the legendary King Kar, son of Zeus and Creta, founded Caria and named it after him, and his brothers Lydos and Mysos founded Lydia and Mysia.
But the question remains... who spoke Celtic?