The Leleges were one of the aboriginal peoples of Greece, the Aegean and southwest Anatolia (compare "Pelasgians"), who were found there when the Indo-European Hellenes arrived. The name Leleges is probably a Greek term itself and not an autonym. According to Apollodorus the name was derived from an autochthonous king names Lelex.

"Leleges" in Anatolia

In Homer's Iliad the Leleges are allies of the Trojans, though they do not occur in the formal catalogue of allies in Iliad book II 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. The name "Pedasus" occurs in several places: near Cyzicus, in the Troad on the Satnioeis river, in Caria, as well as in Messenia, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911. Alcaeus (7th or 6th century BCE) calls Antandrus in the Troad "Lelegian", but later Herodotus substitutes the epithet "Pelasgian". Gargara in the Troad was also counted as Lelegian.

Pherecydes of Leros (5th century) attributed to the Leleges the coast land of Caria from Ephesus to Phocaea, with the islands of Samos and Chios, placing the true Carians farther south from Ephesus to Miletus. If this statement derives from Pherecydes of Leros (ca 480) it has great weight.

Pausanias was reminded that the temple of the Goddess at Ephesus predated the Ionian colony, when it was rededicated to the Goddess as Artemis. He states with certainty that it antedated the Ionic Immigration by many years, being older even than the oracular shrine at Dodona. He says that the pre-Ionic inhabitants of the city were Leleges and Lydians -- with a predominance of the latter -- and that, although Androclus drove out of the land all those whom he found in the upper city, he did not interfere with those who dwelt about the sanctuary. By giving and receiving pledges he put these on a footing of neutrality. These remarks of Pausanias find confirmation in the form of the cult in historic times, centering on a many-breasted icon of Artemis and other cult aspects which, being in all essentials non-Hellenic, suggests the indigenous cult taken over by the Greek settlers.

Often historians assume that the autochthonous inhabitants survived as an under-class where they did not retreat to mountain districts, so it is interesting to read Philippus of Theangela in the 4th century BCE refer to Leleges still surviving as serfs of the "true Carians", and even later Strabo, attributes to the Leleges a distinctive group of deserted forts, tombs and dwellings which ranged (and can still be traced) from the neighborhood of Theangela and Halicarnassus as far north as Miletus, the southern limit of the "true Carians" of Pherecydes. Plutarch also implies the historic existence of Lelegian serfs at Tralles in the interior.

Leleges in Greece and the Aegean

A single passage in the fragmentary Hesiodic catalogue (fragment 136 in Kinkel) places "Leleges" in Deucalion's mythicized and archaic time in Locris in central Greece. Locris is also the refuge of some of the Pelasgian inhabitants forced from Boeotia by Cadmus and his Phoenician adventurers. But not until the 4th century BCE does any other writer place Leleges anywhere west of the Aegean. But the confusion of the Leleges with the Carians (immigrant conquerors akin to Lydians and Mysians, and probably to Phrygians) which first appears in a Cretan legend (quoted by Herodotus, but repudiated, as he says, by the Carians themselves) and is repeated by Callisthenes, Apollodorus and other later writers, led easily to the suggestion of Callisthenes, that Leleges joined the Carians in their (half legendary) raids on tile coasts of Greece.

Herodotus (1.171) says that the Leleges were a people who in old times dwelt in the islands of the Aegean and were subject to Minos of Crete; that they were driven from their homes by the Dorians and Ionians, after which they took refuge in Caria and were named Carians. Herodotus was an Ionian Greek born in Caria himself.

Meanwhile other writers from the 4th century onwards claimed to discover them in Boeotia, west Acarnania (Leucas), and later again in Thessaly, Euboea, Megara, Lacedaemon and Messenia. In Messenia they were reputed immigrant founders of Pylos, and were connected with the seafaring Taphians and Teleboans of Homer, and distinguished from the Pelasgians. However, in Lacedaemon and in Leucas they were believed to be aboriginal. These European Leleges must be interpreted in connection with the recurrence of place names like Pedasus, Physcus, Larymna and Abae, both in Caria, and in these "Lelegian" parts of Greece. Perhaps this is the result of some early migration; perhaps it is also the cause of these Lelegian theories; perhaps there was a widespread pre-Indo-European culture that loosely linked these regions, a possibility on which much modern hypothesis has been constructed.

Aryan Indo-European theorists of the 19th century who inspired modern heirs:

• H. Kiepert, "Uber den Volksstamm der Leleges", (in Monaisber. Bert. A had., 1861, p. 114) made the Leleges an aboriginal people and linked them to Illyrians and thus to Albanians.
• K. W. Deimling, Die Leleger (Leipzig, 1862), originates them in southwest Asia Minor, and brings them thence to Greece (practically the Greek view).
• G. F. Unger, "Hellas in Thessalien," in Philologus, supplement. ii. (I863), made them Phoenician
• E. Curtius, History of Greece, vol.i. even distinguished a "Lelegian" phase of nascent Aegean culture.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. The text concerns substantial parts of two paragraphs