Here too philology steps in, and lends us some small aid. The name of Προσέληνοι, which the Arcadians took to themselves, and which is assumed to mean older than the moon, appears, when so understood, to express a very forced idea: it is difficult indeed to conceive how such a name could even creep into use. But if we refer its origin to πρὸ and Σελλοὶ or Σέλληνες, it then becomes the simple indication of the historical fact we are looking for, namely, that they, a Pelasgic population, occupied Arcadia before any of the Hellic or Sellic races had come into the Peloponnesus. From its rich pastures, Arcadia was originally well adapted for Pelasgian inhabitants. Defended by mountains, it offered, as Attica did through the poverty of its soil, an asylum to the refugees of that race, when dispossessed from other still more fertile, and perhaps also more accessible tracts of the Peloponnesus[159]. Hence it is easy to account both for its original Pelasgian character, and for the long retention of it. We seem then to find the Arcadians of Homer (first) politically dependent, and (secondly) commanded by a foreigner, but yet (thirdly) valiant in war. It would thus appear that what they wanted was not animal or even moral courage, but the political and governing element, which is the main element in high martial talent. All this we shall find, as we already have in some degree found, to be a Pelasgian portraiture. And if it should seem to have been drawn with the aid of conjecture, let it at any rate be observed that it is supported by the Arcadian character in the historic ages. They appear from various indications to have been for many generations the Swiss of Greece: not producing great commanders, and obscure enough, until a very late date, in the political annals of the country, but abounding in the materials of a hardy soldiery, and taking service with this or that section of the Greeks as chance might dictate. For in Xenophon they boast that when any of the Greeks wanted auxiliaries (ἐπίκουροι) they came to Arcadia to obtain them: that the Lacedæmonians took them into company when they invaded Attica, and that the Thebans did the very same when they invaded Lacedæmon[160]. And Thucydides tells us that, in the Sicilian war, the Mantineans, with a portion of their brother Arcadians, fought for hire with the Athenians on one side, while another contingent from the very same State assisted the Corinthians, who had come in force to aid in the defence of Syracuse against them[161]. _The Graians: the Pelasgians and Ceres._ Two other circumstances, slight in themselves, still remain for notice.