Strabo, Geography
H.C. Hamilton, Esq., W. Falconer, M.A., Ed.

We have already spoken of the Pelasgi.¹ Some writers conjecture that the Leleges and Carians are the same people; others, that they were only joint settlers, and comrades in war, because there are said to be some settlements called Settlements of the Leleges in the Milesian territory, and in many parts of Caria there are burial-places of the Leleges, and deserted fortresses, called Lelegia.

The whole country called Ionia was formerly inhabited by Carians and Leleges; these were expelled by the Ionians, who themselves took possession of the country. In still ear- lier times, the captors of Troy² had driven out the Leleges from the places about Ida near the rivers Pedasus and Satnioeis.

The fact of the association of these people with the Carians may be regarded as a proof of their being barbarians, and Aristotle, in his Politics, shows that they were a wandering nation, sometimes in company with the Carians, sometimes alone, and that from ancient times; for, in speaking of the polity of the Acarnanians, he says that the Curetes occupied a part of the country, and the Leleges (and after them the Teleboæ) the western side. On the subject of the Ætolian polity, he calls the present Locri, Leleges, and observes that they occupy Bœotia. He repeats the same remark on the subject of the polity of the Opuntians and Megareans. In speaking of the polity of the Leucadians, he mentions an aboriginal by name, Leleges, and a grandson by his daughter of the name of Teleboas, and besides two and twenty of his sons of the name of Teleboas, some of whom inhabited Lucas. But we should chiefly rely upon Hesiod, who thus speaks of them: “‘For Locrus was the leader of the nation of the Leleges, whom Jupiter, the son of Saturn, in his infinite wisdom, once gave as subjects to Deucalion, a people gathered from among the nations of the earth.’” For it seems to me to be obscurely intimated by the etymology of the name, Leleges, that they were a mixed people anciently collected together, which had become extinct. And this may be said of the Caucones, who exist no where at present, yet were formerly settled in several places.