Leleges

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The Leleges (

Pelasgians. The exact areas to which they were native are uncertain, since they were apparently pre-literate and the only references to them are in ancient Greek sources. These references are casual and (it is alleged) sometimes fictitious.[1]
Likewise, little is known about the language of the Leleges.

Many Greek authors link the Leleges to the Carians of south-west Anatolia.[2] Homer names the Leleges among the Trojan allies alongside the Carians, Pelasgians, Paeonians and Gaucones.[3]

Etymology

It is thought that the name Leleges is an

exonym, in a long-extinct language, rather than an endonym (or autonym). That is, during the Bronze Age the word lulahi apparently meaning "strangers" was used in the Luwian language and in other Anatolian languages. For example, in a Hittite cuneiform inscription, priests and temple servants are directed to avoid conversing with lulahi and foreign merchants.[4] According to the suggestion of Vitaly Shevoroshkin
, an attempt to transliterate lulahi into Greek might result in leleges.

Late traditions reported in Pseudo-Apollodorus,

Lelex; a comparable etymology, memorializing a legendary founder, is provided by Greek mythographers for virtually every tribe of Hellenes: "Lelex and the Leleges, whatever their historical significance, have acted as a blank sheet on which to draw Lakonia and all it means," observes Ken Dowden.[1][7]

Ancient sources on Leleges

Anatolia

In

Pelasgian
", so perhaps the two designations were broadly synonymous for the Greeks.

According to Homer, the Leleges were a distinct Anatolian tribe.[8] However, Herodotus states that Leleges had been an early name for the Carians.[9]

Pherecydes of Athens (ca 480 BC) attributed to the Leleges the coast land of Caria, from Ephesus to Phocaea, with the islands of Samos and Chios, placing the true Carians farther south from Ephesus to Miletus.[citation needed]

Pausanias was reminded that the temple of the goddess at Ephesus predated the Ionian colony there, when it was rededicated to the goddess as Artemis. He states with certainty that it antedated the Ionic immigration by many years, being older even than the oracular shrine at Dodona. He says that the pre-Ionic inhabitants of the city were Leleges and Lydians (with a predominance of the latter) and that, although Androclus drove out of the land all those whom he found in the upper city, he did not interfere with those who dwelt about the sanctuary. By giving and receiving pledges he put these on a footing of neutrality. These remarks of Pausanias find confirmation in the form of the cult in historic times, centering on a many-breasted icon of the "Lady of Ephesus" whom Greeks called Artemis. Other cult aspects, being in all essentials non-Hellenic, suggest the indigenous cult was taken over by the Greek settlers.

The Lady of Ephesus, 1st century AD, Ephesus Archaeological Museum

Often historians assume, as a general rule, that

Tralles (now Aydın
) in the interior.

Greece and the Aegean

The fourth-century BC historian Philippus of Theangela suggested that the Leleges maintained connections to Messenia, Laconia, Locris and other regions in mainland Greece, after they were overcome by the Carians in Asia Minor.[12]

A single passage in the fragmentary

Pelasgian inhabitants forced from Boeotia by Cadmus and his Phoenician adventurers. But not until the 4th century BCE does any other writer place Leleges anywhere west of the Aegean. But the confusion of the Leleges with the Carians (immigrant conquerors akin to Lydians and Mysians) which first appears in a Cretan legend (quoted by Herodotus, but repudiated, as he says, by the Carians themselves) and is repeated by Callisthenes, Apollodorus[citation needed
] and other later writers, led easily to the suggestion of Callisthenes, that Leleges joined the Carians in their (half legendary) raids on the coasts of Greece.

Herodotus (1.171) says that the Leleges were a people who in old times dwelt in the islands of the Aegean and were subject to Minos of Crete (one of the historic references that led Sir Arthur Evans to name the pre-Hellenic Cretan culture "Minoan"); and that they were driven from their homes by the Dorians and Ionians, after which they took refuge in Caria and were named Carians. Herodotus was a Dorian Greek born in Caria himself.

Meanwhile, other writers from the 4th century onwards claimed to discover them in

Lacedaemon and Messenia. In Messenia, they were reputed to have been immigrant founders of Pylos, and were connected with the seafaring Taphians and Teleboans, and distinguished from the Pelasgians. However, in Lacedaemon and in Leucas they were believed to be aboriginal and Dionysius of Halicarnassus mentions that Leleges is the old name for the later Locrians.[15] These European Leleges must be interpreted in connection with the recurrence of place names like Pedasus, Physcus, Larymna and Abae, both in Caria, and in these "Lelegian" parts of Greece. Perhaps this is the result of some early migration; perhaps it is also the cause of these Lelegian theories; perhaps there was a widespread pre-Indo-European
culture that loosely linked these regions, a possibility on which much modern hypothesis has been constructed. Germanic theorists of the 19th century who inspired modern heirs:

References

  1. ^ a b Dowden 1992, p. 58.
  2. ^ Herodotus. 1.171. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  3. ^ Homer. Iliad. Il. 10.429.
  4. JSTOR 594542
    . Let him avoid an early death, let him avoid the anger of the gods [and] the talk of the populace... of the lulahi-men [and] of the merchants...
  5. Library
    . 3.10.3.
  6. ^ Pausanias. Description of Greece. 3.1.1 and 1.39.6. the foreigner Lelex arrived from Egypt, according to Pausanias' informers
  7. ^ Dowden 1992, p. 59.
  8. ^ Homer. Iliad. Il. 10.429.
  9. ^ Herodotus. 1.171. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  10. The Deipnosophists
    . Translated by Yonge, C.D. vi.101. pp. 262–275. Philippus of Theangela, in his treatise on the Carians and Leleges, having made mention of the Helots of the Lacedaemonians and of the Thessalian Penestae, says, "The Carians also, both in former times, and down to the present day, use the Leleges as slaves.
  11. Geography
    . vii.7.1-2.
  12. ^ Müller, Karl Wilhelm Ludwig (1841–1870). Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum. Vol. 1–5. 741.
  13. ^ Cat. fr. 234.
  14. ^ Hesiod, Ehoiai fr. 234; Strabo, 7.7.2
  15. Roman Antiquities
    . Book I, 17.

Bibliography

External links

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