by Lulzim Osmanaj
Abstract
This study explores the theory that the Pelasgians of antiquity correspond to the ancestors of modern Albanians, based on linguistic, historical, and onomastic evidence from the Italian and Balkan peninsulas. Ancient sources, including Herodotus, Strabo, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Varro, record Illyrian tribes and place names across Epirus, Crete, and southern Italy, including the Messapians, Peucetians, and Japygian groups. The shared toponymic patterns, tribal names, and cultural markers suggest that these populations migrated and settled in Italy before Greek and Latin influences. The study highlights the enduring Illyrian presence in pre-Hellenic Italy and the historical continuity linking Pelasgians to modern Albanians.
Italy in antiquity must have been named either Latium or Samnium. Among the Greeks, only the Oenotrians were called Illyrians.
The names of places, rivers and people in lower Italy are almost all found in the Illyrian lands. The city of Saluntum in Dalmatia is named after the Salentines. The fact that the Illyrian Japodes on the northern coast of the Adriatic Sea were also called Iapiges, like their tribes on the Gulf of Tarentum, comes from Hecataeus (Steph. v. Βyz. Ιαπυγία), who knew the Iapiges in Illyria and Italy. Japydia was also called Aen in Veneto.
Japyger was also the ancient name of the Illyrians, which was also preserved in the Phoenician-Hebrew table of nations as Japheth. We believe that we have proven¹) that the Phoenicians named all the Aryan peoples after the Illyrians, because they became acquainted with them at a time when they occupied the Balkan Peninsula and Italy before the appearance of the Thracian-Phrygians, the Hellenes, the Umbro-Sabellians.
Or it was still vividly remembered at that time that the Illyrians lived in both peninsulas before all other Aryan tribes. The Messapians also occur in those areas of Greece where there is evidence of an autochthonous Illyrian population). Another Illyrian tribe were the Pulians (present-day Puglia) and the Peucetians, who, according to Strabo, spoke the same language.
The locals called themselves Pulians, the Greeks called them Daunii). Callimachus also leads the Peucetians in Illyrian Liburnia who mention a city Dardanus in Daunii, which is reminiscent of the Illyrian Dardanians.Arupium in Liburnia is located near the Apulian city of Arpi. Even the names of the places in Lower Italy prove that the population was of Illyrian origin.
Just as in Epirus and Sicily they are called Thesprotians, so in Lower Italy there are Konjane who recall the Kaons of Epirus. Barium in Puglia has its own. Analogy in Bari, the Albanian name of Antivar [today’s Tivari].The Lacinian mountain reminds one of Mount Lacmon [Lakmon as in today’s Albanian, the one who covets] in the Pindus mountains and the Lacinienses in Liburnia in Pliny III. B. 9.In Genusini in the area of the Poediculians, Helbig¹) places an Illyrian river Genusus.
In Lower Italy there is Cannae, in Illyria Cannina, Bantia in Italy and Illyria, in Italy Ulci and Arusium, in Illyria Ulcinium and Arausium, in Bruttium a river Butrotus, in Illyria a city Butrotum. The endings of the names of cities reveal a similar formation on both sides. Often in Japygia, as Mommsen and Helbig observe, the ending -5 -ντος occurs, from which the Latins have made “-ntum.”
It is evident that the name of the Pelasgian Lucans or Lycans (Greek Λευκανοί) is connected with Leucas, the cape of Acarnania and the Leucadian island. The Campanians do not take their name from the Latin campus, because Epirus was once also called Campania, named after a king Campus or his daughter Campania. 3). The fact that the name is purely Illyrian is confirmed by Kampylos,[I HAVE FORESTS, so I have Forests, I have Forests]a branch of the Achelous, rising in the Pindus.
Another name for the Campanians may have been Opiker. Antiochus), who here seems especially credible as a Sicilian, identifies the Opikers with the Ausonians, whom the Romans called Aurunci. 5) Cato leaves the Aurunci living in Rhegium before the appearance of the Greeks, Probus in Virgil BV 2. The Ausonians are called by Dionysus Siculer and called Illyrians.
Alexarchus und Aristonicus bei Serv. te Vergil III. 334. It is established that there (in Epirus) there was once a king named Kampus, and his descendants were called Campylidas, and Epirus was called Campania, as the Greek historian Alexarchus and Aristonicus state. The daughter of Varro was called Campania, whence the name of the province comes, after which she was called Chaonia by Hellenus, who had killed his brother Chaon, or, as others say, the count, while hunting.
Others have said that the daughter of Campos, Cestria, married Helen, and the name of Campos’ father-in-law, named Chaonis, Chaonas. Etym. Magnum καμπανοί. Therefore, one cannot identify the Opikers with the Oscans, as has often been the case. According to Strabo 1), the Oscians inhabited these areas after the Ausonians and the Opikers.
The name of the Opics was first established by Hoffmann using the probably Thracian word “apia” known by Herodotus, which is also found in the names of the people of Helloper, Meroper, Dryoper, Doloper, etc.
By the name of the Opics, the king likes Opis, who fell as an ally of the Peuketi in the battle against the Tarentines in 480, it can also be seen from the names of the places that the population of Campania was originally of Illyrian origin, Capua recalls Capys, the grandfather of Aeneas, from whom it is also derived according to Dionysius I. 67, of the Arcadian Capyae, of the Panti-capaeum in the country of the Cimmerians and the Treren and Capi.
The Dava in Dacia Treren mentioned recalls Treros (Sacco), a tributary of the Garigliano, the Cimmerians were known in ancient times for their warlike qualities and it is very likely that its name should be combined with the new “skr. kumara”, warrior. The Cimmerians are also located near Cumae, who also had their cocytus, periphlegeto and their Acherusian lake there. Sil. Italian XII.Strabo V. Eustatius Od. X. v. 514.
It is surprising that Virgil and Dionysius never speak of them. In Ancona there is a cap called Cumerium. Acerrae (Greek: ᾿Ακέρραι) is the Messapic personal name Acerratius ³). Hyria (later Nola from Novla, Oscan) also occurs among the Salentines, and also in the area of the Boeotian mountain Messapos. In Messapian this city was called Orra, hence also in Epirus there was a Horreum.
The Phlegraean regions include Phlegra, the old name for Pallene in Macedonia, Amuclae near Cajeta) and Amyclae Laconian. Near Amuclae are Apina and Tricca), the first of which must be connected with the above-mentioned Illyrian-Thracian Apina and the second with the Thessalian Trica. Larissa in Campania, of which no trace remains in the time of Dionysius, reminds one of Thessalian Larissa.
Dionysius says that Larissa was founded by the Siculians, who once possessed all Campania. Also the city Celennae, known from the Aeneid, reminds one of Kleinensia. Herodotus reports that the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians, who were understood to be Illyrians, killed their children on Lemnos because they had learned the Attic language from their mothers.
In the Italian peninsula the hatred of the Illyrians against the Hellenes was no less: the defeat that the Tarentines suffered at the hands of the Messapians in 473 was considered the most terrible that a Greek army had ever suffered.
Of course, the Iapygian tribes, like the Albanian people related to Greece, had a great preference for the Hellenic language, perhaps for practical reasons they were always hostile to the Hellenes.
Even the Hellenes did not see them as tribal relatives; on the contrary, the Iapygians appeared to them as barbarians, like the Epirotes and Macedonians.The fact that Hellenic philologists placed the Iapygian language alongside Cretan, Epirotic, and Macedonian is evident from the fact that Seleucus, the grammarian, gave glosses for Messapic, Cretan, Epirotic, and Macedonian, but did not record Persian and Punic ones.3)
Crete also originally had a settled Illyrian population. We now also understand Varro’s story that Idomeneus, expelled from Crete, first came to Illyria and then founded Uria and Castrum Minervae with the Illyrian people on the Calabrian peninsula. According to Servius in Aeneid III, 332, Japys came to Italy from Crete.
A peculiar aberration of the Illyrian popular character is found both among the Cretans and the Iapygians. Timaeus) says that the Greeks are said to have learned their love for boys, especially in its degeneracy, from the Cretans. When the Hellenes came to Italy, they found it in shameless publicity among the Messapians. 57, 10.
References
(4) Herodotus, VI. 138.
*) Antiochus in Strabo VI, 3. Theopompus in Athenaeus XII. pq. 518
Pausanias X, 10, Diodorus XXI. e.g. Hoeschel.
*) Mommsen: Low Italian Dialects, pp. 70 and 85. 4)
By Probus to Virgil, Eclogue 6, 31
4) Athenaeus, XIII. 602.
Atheneu, XII. 518
1) Strabo V.4.
) Hoffmann Zeus and Cronos. Leipzig 1876. ) Mommsen, Dialects of Lower Italy, p. 73.
*) Varro in Pliny. VIII. 29, III. 5, Solin
*) Pliny III. 10.
Protected Mountains Ma
*) Strabo V.
*) The Arunci were the most ancient people of Italy. Served. V. VII. 206.
Dionysus of Halicarnassus I
1) Fliger: On language. Ethnology of the Balkan Peninsula, p. 15.
*) Fliger: Foreword. Ethnology of the Balkan Peninsula, pp. 33 and
*) Strabo VI. 4.
4) Strabo VI. 3.
Pliny III. B. 9.
Lycophron, Cassandra 1129, 1129;
‘) Helbig f. 268.
