LELEGES was the name applied to an early race or set of races around the Aegean Archipelago. The name occurs in Leucadia, Acarnania, Aetolia, Phocis, Locris, Boeotia, Megara, Laconia, Elis, the islands of the Aegean, the Troad, and Caria. It is hardly possible to suppose that a single race was to be found in so many widely separated localities. Herodotus identifies the Leleges with the Carians, saying that the ancient name of that race was Leleges, whereas Pausanias declares that the name Leleges was younger, and Athenaeus makes the Leleges serfs of the Carians. Homer introduces both Leleges and Carians as distinct peoples in alliance with Troy. The former have a king Aites and a city Pedasus. Strabo counts the Leleges and the Carians different races, so intermingled that they were often identified. Both in Leucadia and in Laconia the story runs that the autochthonous inhabitants were the Leleges, whereas in Messenia the Leleges were an immigrant race who had founded Pylus. They were said to be the ancestors of the Taphians and Teleboans, two seafaring and piratic races. The only view as yet advanced which introduces any unity into these scattered notices is that of Curtius. According to him the name Leleges represents rather a stage in historical development than a single race. The name occurs always in the coast lands; and in the early stage of Greek history, when the simple barbarous tribes of older stock were stimulated to the first beginnings of progress and civilization by the appearance of foreign mariners on their shore, the mixed race of immigrants and natives was called Leleges. It is the almost universal opinion that the whole of the Aegean coast lands were occupied by homogeneous tribes of Aryan stock; on this view then the Leleges, 7.e., as Strabo already ...