In the most ancient times of the migration of the Pelasgian pastoral tribes, the national language of this people was spread over the best part of western Asia, of Europe and of North Africa.
After the dethronement of Saturn though, the ancient national language of the Pelasgians begins to differentiate in several dialects. On the one hand the huge extension of the Pelasgian pastoral population, and on another their mixing with elements of other races, with subjected and tributary peoples, had as a consequence the forming of several Pelasgian idioms.
According to the religious traditions of the Hebrews, only a single usual language had existed for the entire earth, up to the founding of Babylon.
“And there was a single language and speech on the entire earth” Book I of Moses tells us. In those times, one part of Noah’s descendants, departing towards the east, found a plain in the land of Sinar, and said: let’s build a city and a tower with its top to the sky and let’s make a name for ourselves. Then Jova (Jehova) descended to see the city and the tower. “And Jova said: look, they are a single people and they all have one language, and what have they started to do….Come then to mix their language there, so that they won’t understand any more each other’s language. And thus he scattered them from there, over the face of the entire earth… because Jova mixed there the language of the entire earth (Biblia sacra ex interpretatione Sebastiani Castellionis, LIpsiae, 1778. Gen. c. 11).
From a historical point of vies, Jehova of the Hebrew religion, or Jova in the best Biblical texts, represents Jupiter or Jovis of the divine dynasty, Iova or Iov emperor of Romanian folk songs.
The mixing of the languages coincides therefore, according to the Mosaic tradition, with the dethronement of Saturn, with the scattering of the Titans and Giants, and with the rising of the southern elements against the political domination of the northern Pelasgians.
But we start to have more positive historical data about the ancient language of the Pelasgians, only from the times of Homer onwards.
“In the great city of Priam”, the Iliad tells us (II. 803), “were many who had come to the aid of the Trojans from various far away lands, some of one language, others of another…” “In the army of the Trojans there was not only one war cry and one language, but the language was mixed, because fighters from many lands had come there” (Iliad. IV. 436).
Homer also mentions especially the language of two Pelasgian peoples. The inhabitants of Caria in Asia Minor, he tells us, spoke a barbarian language (barbarophonoi, Iliad. II. 867), and the Pelasgians of Lemnos had a wild, rustic language (agriophonoi, Odyss. ViII. 294), meaning also barbarian.
XLI. 2. The Pelasgians spoke a barbarian language, according to Herodotus.
We find other historical notes about the ancient language the Pelasgians with Herodotus.
“Which language had the Pelasgians used”, writes he (lib. I. 57, 58), “I certainly cannot affirm; but if we were permitted to draw a conclusion about the Pelasgians who still exist today in the city Crestonia above the Tursenii (in the eastern part of Macedonia, near the sea), and who once dwelt in the region today called Thessaliotis … also, if we had in mind the language of the Pelasgians who had founded the cities Placia and Scylax of Hellespont, and who had previously dwelt together with the Athenians, then we could affirm that the Pelasgians had used a barbarian language …In regard of the nation of the Hellenes though, these had always used, ever since their beginning, the same language, but different from that of the Pelasgian nation …The Pelasgians themselves were a people of barbarian nationality”.
Herodotus speaks here, as we see, only about the Pelasgians who had once dwelt on the territory of Hellada, and about the colonies of these Pelasgians established on the northern shores of the Aegean Sea.
It results therefore, from the notes which we find with Homer and Herodotus, that the barbarian language spoken by the Pelasgians from the territory of Hellada, was an external language. The great mass of the nation of the Barbarians was formed by the Pelasgian populations from the north of Greece, but especially by those from the north of the lower Istru and the Black Sea.
The same ethnic and geographical name had been also adopted by the Romans.
In the first times of the Roman empire, under the name Barbaria, Barbaricum, Barbaricum solum and terra Barbarorum, was meant the vast territory of Europe from the north of Istru to the Ocean and to the frontiers of Asia.
Trajan, writes Sextus Rufus (Brev. c. 8), has conquered Dacia, which was situated on the land of Barbaria, and has made it into a province.
The entire vast lands of Scythia, comprised between the lower Danube and the Meotic Lake, was called, according to Isidorus, terra barbarica (Orig. XIV. 4. 3).
The eastern parts of Mesia are called by Ovid, barbariae loca and Barbara terra (Trist. V. 12, 55; III. 3, 46). With Ammianus, all the countries north of Pannonia figure under the name Barbarorum terrae, Barbaricum and Barbaria (lib. XVII. 12; Bocking, Notit. Dign. 91; II. 96).
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