According to Strabo, the Pelasgi were the most ancient race which had held power in Greece: τῶν περὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα δυναστευσάντων ἀρχαιότατοι[378]. In the same place he calls the oracle of Dodona Πελασγῶν ἵδρυμα, a Pelasgian foundation. He expressly supports the construction which has been given above to the Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος of Homer[379], in the words τὸ Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος ἡ Θετταλία λέγεται, and he defines the country by the Peneus, Pindus, and Thermopylæ. He traces the Pelasgi in a multitude of particular places, and, on the authority of Ephorus, mentions Πελασγία as a name of Peloponnesus. He also gives us that fragment of Euripides, which states, in harmony with the testimony of Æschylus, that Danaus came to Greece, founded the city of Inachus, and changed the name of the inhabitants from Pelasgiotes to Danaans. Πελασγιώτας δ’ ὠνομασμένους τὸ πρὶν Δαναοὺς καλεῖσθαι νόμον ἔθηκ’ ἀν’ Ἑλλάδα. And Strabo considers that both the Pelasgiote and the Danaan name, together with that of the Hellenes, were covered by the Argive or Argeian name on account of the fame, to which the city of Argos rose[380]. The writings of Dionysius of Halicarnassus probably represent all, that a sound judgment could gather from the records and traditions extant in his time[381]. He pronounces confidently, that the Pelasgian race was Hellenic; which I take to mean, that it was one of the component parts of the body afterwards called Hellenic, not that the early Pelasgi were included among the early Hellenes. He considers that the race came from Peloponnesus, where many believed it to be autochthonic, into Thessaly, under Achæus, Phthius, and Pelasgus. It was unfortunate, as in other respects, so in being driven to frequent migrations. This idea of the frequent displacement of the Pelasgians was probably the product in the main of the two facts, first, that traces of them were found at many widely separated points, and secondly, that, according to tradition, they had sunk into a position of inferiority. K. O. Müller, proceeding chiefly on the post-Homeric tradition, has strongly summed up the evidence as to the Pelasgi, to the following effect. They were the original inhabitants of the plains and flat bottoms of the valleys, any one of which the ancients called by the name Ἄργος, as we see by the plains of the Peneus, and of the Inachus. If, as Strabo holds, this use of the word was in his time modern, and Macedonian or Thessalian, it may still have been a revival of a primitive usage, even as the very old word Γραικὸς had come back into use with the Alexandrian poets, through the old common tongue of Macedonia.