Anatolia In
Homer's
Iliad, the
Leleges are allies of the Trojans (10.429), though they do not appear in the formal
catalogue of allies in Book II of the Iliad, and their homeland is not specified. They are distinguished from the
Carians, with whom some later writers confused them; they have a king, Altes, and a city
Pedasus which was sacked by
Achilles. The topographical name "Pedasus" occurs in several ancient places: near
Cyzicus, in the
Troad on the Satniois River, in
Caria, as well as in
Messenia, according to
Encyclopædia Britannica 1911.
Gargara in the
Troad was counted as Lelegian.
Alcaeus (7th or 6th century BCE) calls
Antandrus in the
Troad "Lelegian", but later
Herodotus substitutes the epithet "
Pelasgian", so perhaps the two designations were broadly synonymous for the Greeks. According to
Homer, the Leleges were a distinct Anatolian tribe. However,
Herodotus states that
Leleges had been an early name for the
Carians.
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.
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. Often historians assume, as a general rule, that
autochthonous inhabitants survive an invasion as an under-class where they do not retreat to mountain districts, so it is interesting to hear in
Deipnosophistae that
Philippus of Theangela (a 4th-century BC historian) referred to
Leleges still surviving as serfs of the "true Carians", and even later
Strabo attributes to the
Leleges a distinctive group of deserted forts and tombs in Caria that were still known in his day as "Lelegean forts"; the
Encyclopædia Britannica 1911 identified these as ruins that could still be traced ranging from the neighborhood of
Theangela and
Halicarnassus as far north as Miletus, the southern limit of the "true Carians" of Pherecydes. Plutarch also implies the historic existence of Lelegian serfs at
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. A single passage in the fragmentary
Hesiodic
Catalogue of Women places "Leleges" in
Deucalion's mythicized and archaic time in
Locris in central Greece, identified as the rocks turned human that repopulated the earth after the great deluge. Locris is also the refuge of some of the
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, 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
Boeotia, west
Acarnania (
Leucas), and later again in
Thessaly,
Euboea,
Megara,
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. 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: • H. Kiepert. "Über den Volksstamm der Leleges", (in
Monatsberichte Berliner Akademie, 1861, p. 114) asserted that the Leleges were an aboriginal people and linked them to
Illyrians. • K. W. Deimling.
Die Leleger (Leipzig, 1862), places their origins in southwest
Asia Minor, and brings them thence to Greece, essentially repeating the classical Greek view. • G. F. Unger. "Hellas in Thessalien," in
Philologus, supplement. ii. (1863), made them
Phoenician. • E. Curtius.
History of Greece, (vol. i) even distinguished a "Lelegian" phase of nascent Aegean culture. ==References==