It is rare to find a genuine Greek colony established at any distance from the sea; but the two Asiatic towns called Magnêsia form exceptions to this position,—one situated on the south side of the Mæander, or rather on the river Lethæus, which runs into the Mæander; the other more northerly, adjoining to the Æolic Greeks, on the northern declivity of Mount Sipylus, and near to the plain of the river Harmus. The settlement of both these towns dates before the period of history: the tale[303] which we read affirms them to be settlements from the Magnêtes in Thessaly, formed by emigrants who had first passed into Krête, under the orders of the Delphian oracle, and next into Asia, where they are said to have extricated the Ionic and Æolic colonists, then recently arrived, from a position of danger and calamity. By the side of this story, which can neither be verified nor contradicted, it is proper to mention the opinion of Niebuhr, that both these towns of Magnêsia are remnants of a primitive Pelasgic population, akin to, but not emigrants from, the Magnêtes of Thessaly,—Pelasgians whom he supposes to have occupied both the valley of the Hermus and that of the Kaïster, anterior to the Æolic and Ionic migrations. In support of this opinion, it may be stated that there were towns bearing the Pelasgic name of Larissa, both near the Hermus and near the Mæander: Menekratês of Elæa considered the Pelasgians as having once occupied most part of that coast; and O. Müller even conceives the Tyrrhenians to have been Pelasgians from Tyrrha, a town in the interior of Lydia south of Tmôlus. The point is one upon which we have not sufficient evidence to advance beyond conjecture.[304] [303] Conon, Narrat. 29; Strabo, xiv, pp. 636-647. The story in Parthenius about Leukippus, leader τῶν δεκατευθέντων ἐκ Φέρης υπ᾽ Ἀδμήτου, who came to the Ephesian territory and acquired possession of the place called Kretinæon, by the treachery of Leukophryê, daughter of Mandrolytos, whether truth or romance, is one of the notices of Thessalian migration into those parts (Parthen. Narrat. 6). [304] Strabo, xiii, p. 621. See Niebuhr, Kleine Historische Schriften, p. 371, O. Müller, Etrusker, Einleitung ii, 5, p. 80. The evidence on which Müller’s conjecture is built seems, however, unusually slender, and the identity of Tyrrhênos and Torrhêbos, or the supposed confusion of the one with the other, is in no way made out. Pelasgians are spoken of in Trallês and Aphrodisias as well as in Ninoê (Steph. Byz. v. Νινόη), but this name seems destined to present nothing but problems and delusions.