[422] That Krêstôn is the proper reading in Herodotus, there seems every reason to believe—not Krotôn, as Dionys. Hal. represents it (Ant. Rom. i. 26)—in spite of the authority of Niebuhr in favor of the latter. [423] Thucyd. iv. 109. Compare the new Fragmenta of Strabo, lib. vii. edited from the Vatican MS. by Kramer, and since by Tafel (Tübingen, 1844), sect. 34, p. 26,—ᾤκησαν δὲ τὴν Χεῤῥόνησον ταύτην τῶν ἐκ Λήμνου Πελασγῶν τινες, εἰς πέντε διῃρήμενοι πολίσματα· Κλεωνὰς, Ὀλόφυχον, Ἀκροθώους, Δῖον, Θύσσον. This is the one single fact, amidst so many conjectures concerning the Pelasgians, which we can be said to know upon the testimony of a competent and contemporary witness: the few townships—scattered and inconsiderable, but all that Herodotus in his day knew as Pelasgian—spoke a barbarous language. And upon such a point, he must be regarded as an excellent judge. If, then, (infers the historian,) all the early Pelasgians spoke the same language as those of Krêstôn and Plakia, they must have changed their language at the time when they passed into the Hellenic aggregate, or became Hellens. Now, Herodotus conceives that aggregate to have been gradually enlarged to its great actual size by incorporating with itself not only the Pelasgians, but several other nations once barbarians;[424] the Hellens having been originally an inconsiderable people. Among those other nations once barbarian, whom Herodotus supposes to have become Hellenized, we may probably number the Leleges; and with respect to them, as well as to the Pelasgians, we have contemporary testimony proving the existence of barbarian Leleges in later times. Philippus, the Karian historian, attested the present existence, and believed in the past existence, of Leleges in his country, as serfs or dependent cultivators under the Karians, analogous to the Helots in Laconia, or the Penestæ in Thessaly.[425] We may be very sure that there were no Hellens—no men speaking the Hellenic tongue—standing in such a relation to the Karians. Among those many barbaric-speaking nations whom Herodotus believed to have changed their language and passed into Hellens, we may, therefore, fairly consider the Leleges to have been included. For next to the Pelasgians and Pelasgus, the Leleges and Lelex figure most conspicuously in the legendary genealogies; and both together cover the larger portion of the Hellenic soil. [424] Herod. i. 57. προσκεχωρηκότων αὐτῷ καὶ ἄλλων ἐθνέων βαρβάρων συχνῶν. [425] Athenæ. vi. p. 271. Φίλιππος ἐν τῷ περὶ Καρῶν καὶ Λελέγων συγγράμματι, καταλέξας τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίων Εἵλωτας καὶ τοὺς Θετταλικοὺς πενέστας, καὶ Κᾶράς φησι τοῖς Λέλεξιν ὡς οἰκέταις χρήσασθαι ~πάλαι τε καὶ νῦν~.