Usually the Pelasgi are considered as a much wandering people,[123] though it would be more correct to represent them, like the Anglo-Saxon race in modern times, as the prolific parents of many settlements, spreading widely, but taking root wherever they spread. A proof of this still exists in the vast structures[124] which they reared, whose ruins are yet found scattered through Asia, Greece, and Italy. These Cyclopian buildings, palaces, treasuries, fortresses, barrows, were not the works of nomadic hordes, but of a people attached to the soil and resolute in defending it. Navigation, likewise, they cultivated, and were among the earliest nations who possessed a power at sea,[125] which led necessarily to the study of astronomy, together with the occult science of the stars.[126] Of their progress in the more ordinary arts of utility we have very little knowledge, but we find in the Iliad a Pelasgian woman staining ivory to be used as ornaments of a war-horse;[127] the invention of the shepherd’s crook was attributed to them; so likewise was the religious dance called Hyporchema;[128] their proficiency in music is spoken of;[129] and their pre-eminence in war was signified by representing them as inventors of the shield.[130] Footnote 123: Strab. xiii. 3. p. 144. Footnote 124: Serv. ad Æn. vi. 630. Winkelmann, ii. 557. On the Cyclopian walls of Crotona. Mus. Cortonen. pl. i. Rom. 1756. Footnote 125: Palm. Gr. Ant. p. 60. Herm. Pol. Ant. p. 13. Footnote 126: Palm. Gr. Ant. p. 72. Footnote 127: δ. 142. Sch. Apol. Rhod. iii. 1323. Natal. Com. 611. Footnote 128: Phot. Bib. 320. b. Footnote 129: They were the inventors of the trumpet. Πελασγιὰς ἔβρεμε σάλπιγξ, Nonn. Dion. 47. 568. Cf. Paus. ii. 21. 3. Gœttl. ad Hes. Theog. 311. Footnote 130: Serv. ad Æn. ix. 505.