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What the language of the Pelasgi was I cannot say with any
certainty. If, however, we may form a conjecture from the tongue
spoken by the Pelasgi of the present day - those, for instance, who
live at Creston above the Tyrrhenians, who formerly dwelt in the
district named Thessaliotis, and were neighbours of the people now
called the Dorians - or those again who founded Placia and Scylace
upon the Hellespont, who had previously dwelt for some time with the
Athenians - or those, in short, of any other of the cities which
have dropped the name but are in fact Pelasgian; if, I say, we are
to form a conjecture from any of these, we must pronounce that the
Pelasgi spoke a barbarous language. If this were really so, and the
entire Pelasgic race spoke the same tongue, the Athenians, who were
certainly Pelasgi, must have changed their language at the same time
that they passed into the Hellenic body; for it is a certain fact that
the people of Creston speak a language unlike any of their neighbours,
and the same is true of the Placianians, while the language spoken by
these two people is the same; which shows that they both retain the
idiom which they brought with them into the countries where they are now settled.
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