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Concept
Leleges
Summary
The Leleges (ˈlɛlᵻdʒiːz; Λέλεγες) were an aboriginal people of the Aegean region, before the Greeks arrived. They were distinct from another pre-Hellenic people of the region, the Pelasgians. The exact areas to which they were native are uncertain, since they were apparently pre-literate and the only references to them are in ancient Greek sources. These references are casual and (it is alleged) sometimes fictitious. Likewise, little is known about the language of the Leleges.
Many Greek authors link the Leleges to the Carians of south-west Anatolia. Homer names the Leleges among the Trojan allies alongside the Carians, Pelasgians, Paeonians and Gaucones.
It is thought that the name Leleges is an exonym, in a long-extinct language, rather than an endonym (or autonym). That is, during the Bronze Age the word lulahi apparently meaning "strangers" was used in the Luwian language and in other Anatolian languages. For example, in a Hittite cuneiform inscription, priests and temple servants are directed to avoid conversing with lulahi and foreign merchants. According to the suggestion of Vitaly Shevoroshkin, an attempt to transliterate lulahi into Greek might result in leleges.
Late traditions reported in Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke, and by Pausanias, derive the name from an eponymous king Lelex; a comparable etymology, memorializing a legendary founder, is provided by Greek mythographers for virtually every tribe of Hellenes: "Lelex and the Leleges, whatever their historical significance, have acted as a blank sheet on which to draw Lakonia and all it means," observes Ken Dowden.
In Homer's Iliad, the Leleges are allies of the Trojans (10.429), though they do not appear in the formal catalogue of allies in Book II of the Iliad, and their homeland is not specified. They are distinguished from the Carians, with whom some later writers confused them; they have a king, Altes, and a city Pedasus which was sacked by Achilles.
Official source
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