In early moments the Pelasgi, as i learn by the information which i got during the Dodona, given sacrifices of the many kinds, and you can prayed into the gods, however, didn’t come with type of labels or appellations for them, since they had never heard of one

Besides this type of that happen to be here stated, there are various most other means whereof I shall cam hereafter, which the Greeks features lent regarding Egypt. The fresh new peculiarity, however, which they to see within their sculptures of Mercury it didn’t result of new Egyptians, but regarding the Pelasgi; from their website the brand new Athenians very first then followed they, and you can afterwards it passed in the Athenians to the other Greeks. For only at the time if Athenians was indeed entering into the latest Hellenic human body, this new Pelasgi stumbled on accept them within their nation, whence it was that second came earliest is thought about as Greeks. New Samothracians acquired such secrets regarding the Pelasgi, exactly who, before it visited reside in Attica, was basically dwellers for the Samothrace, and you can imparted their spiritual ceremonies towards inhabitants. The brand new Athenians, upcoming, who have been the original of all of the Greeks and then make its statues regarding Mercury in this way, studied the fresh habit on Pelasgians; and by it people a religious membership of the count are offered, which is said on the Samothracian mysteries.

It titled her or him gods (Theoi, disposers), while they disposed and create all things in including a gorgeous acquisition. Once a long lapse of your time the new names of your own gods came to Greece from Egypt, therefore the Pelasgi studied them, merely until now they realized nothing out-of Bacchus, of just who it earliest heard from the a significantly after go out. Not long following the arrival of your names it delivered to consult the oracle within Dodona on the subject. Here is the extremely ancient oracle during the Greece, and also at the period there clearly was hardly any other. To their matter, “If they is always to embrace the fresh brands that were brought in regarding the newest foreign people?” the newest oracle replied of the recommending its play with.

Whence this new gods severally jumped, if if any they had all existed regarding eternity, exactly what models it exercise- these are concerns where the fresh Greeks knew absolutely nothing through to the other date, as they say. Getting Homer and you will Hesiod have been the first to create Theogonies, and present brand new gods its epithets, so you’re able to allocate him or her their multiple offices and you can jobs, and you may determine the versions; in addition they resided however, four hundred years ahead of my big date, when i faith. As for the poets who’re thought of the certain to be prior to when such, they are, within my wisdom, decidedly after editors. During these matters I have the fresh authority of the priestesses out-of Dodona towards the previous portion of my personal statements; what i have said out of Homer and Hesiod try my own view.

Thenceforth inside their sacrifices the fresh new Pelasgi utilized the labels of one’s gods, and from their website new brands enacted later on to your Greeks

The second facts is sometimes advised from inside the Egypt regarding the oracle out of Dodona for the Greece, and this of Ammon within the Libya. My personal informants on area was in fact the new priests of Jupiter in the Thebes. It told you “one a couple of sacred girls was once sent faraway from Thebes from the Phoenicians, which the storyline went this package of them are ended up selling toward Libya, and most other on the Greece, that females have been the first creators view website of one’s oracles from inside the the 2 nations.” On my inquiring how they found understand therefore exactly what turned into of your ladies, it responded, “one diligent lookup was actually generated once her or him at the time, however, that it wasn’t discover possible and determine in which these were; later, yet not, it received all the info that they had offered me personally.”