It is observed by Cramer[390], that the prevailing opinion among those ancient writers, who have discussed the subject, places the Pelasgians first in the Peloponnesus: this being maintained by Pherecydes, Ephorus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Pausanias, without any dissentients to oppose them. This tradition evidently favours the opinion of a passage by the south. Dionysius, who may be regarded as summing up the general results of Greek tradition, says[391] it placed the Pelasgians first in the Peloponnesus as autochthons; and represented them as having migrated to Thessaly in the sixth generation. In six generations more, they were, he conceives, expelled by the Ætolians and Locrians, then called Curetes and Leleges, and were dispersed into various quarters: indeed, here the tradition seems to become wholly vague or mythical, and to have gathered into one mass most of the places in which there appeared signs of Pelasgic occupancy: it includes the report of a great migration to Italy. Marsh[392] considers Thrace as the original seat in Europe of the Pelasgi; but the _data_ on which he proceeds are too narrow; they have reference only to the islands of Lemnus, Imbrus, and Samothrace. There is no evidence of Pelasgians on the Continent to the north of the Ægean except what places them at a distance from Troy (τῆλε Hom. Il. xvii. 301), and if so, at a point which they may have reached from those islands, more probably, than by the continental route. It is on the whole more likely, however, that Pelasgians may have found their way into Greece both by the north (and if so, probably through the islands), and also by the south. Homer affords no materials for conclusively determining the question. He gives us the Pelasgic name established in Thessaly, which favours our supposing the one passage, and likewise in Crete, which favours the other. He gives us the Pelasgic Jove of Dodona (a very weighty piece of testimony), and the τέμενος of Ceres in Thessaly, telling rather for the first; and he likewise gives us a perceptible connection between Ceres and Crete, and between Jupiter and king Minos, verging to the latter. But it is to be observed that, with the exception of Attica, the chief Homeric tokens of Pelasgianism lie in Northern and in Southern, but not in Middle, Greece: which favours the opinion, that there may have been a double line of entry.