Pelasgi

He could shake his head when the young Egyptian, fresh from the provincial luxury of Antino�, mentioned Magna Graecia as a mysterious land where the secret of knowledge was perhaps in the hands of the descendants of the Pelasgi.

Here was the Roma Quadrata, the "oppidum," or fortress of the Pelasgi, of which the only remaining trace is the name Roma, signifying force.

Pelasgic, pē-las′jik, adj. pertaining to the Pelasgians or Pelasgi, a race spread over Greece in prehistoric times, to whom are ascribed many enormous remains built of unhewn stones, without cement—the so-called Pelasgic architecture.

There were, next, the Pelasgi, the real aborigines of Greece, the authors of those gigantic walls and constructions, which are known in Italy by the name of Cyclopean, and in Greece by that of Pelasgic, and some of which still exist, besides several others that existed in the Peloponnesus, and which are mentioned by the ancients.

And hence we can understand why Herodotus, for example, should have attributed to the Ionians in particular much that was Pelasgic, as if under this new denomination they were in all essential points the ancient Pelasgi, or had mingled more with the latter, and were not of such a pure Hellenic race as the Dorians: for in other respects, the Pelasgi and Hellenes are represented as being originally two perfectly distinct nations.