Bishop Richard Cumberland (1631–1718)

From the Planting of Nations

PAUSANIAS expressly testifies that the people of Arcadia were all Pelasgi, and their country called Pelasgia before the time of Arcas, from whom the name of Arcadia was derived. (See the beginning of Pausanias’s Arcadics, where you will find this acknowledged.) And although he do there mention a fabulous tradition that the earth brought forth Pelasgus upon the high mountains of Arcadia, out of Asius an old poet, yet he believed it not; because he adds, out of his own reason, that there were other men there at that time; otherwise Pelasgus would have had no subjects over whom he should reign: and then he proceeds to tell us that they were Pelasgi before Arcas was born.

But if we compare with him Dionysius Halicarnassensis in the latter part of his first book, we shall find that one Atlas, whose former habitation was on Caucasus, was the first king in Arcadia. And Apollodorus informs us that he was the son of Japetus, and brother to Prometheus (with whom Hesiod agrees). And since Diodorus Siculus assures us that the eldest Prometheus lived in the time of Osirus, whom we have elsewhere showed to be Mizraim, the son of Ham, Japhet’s brother, we shall perceive that Arcadia is intimated by these Greek writers to be planted about the third generation after the Flood, not long after the planting of Egypt by Mizraim: but the planters of it were then called Pelasgi, not Arcades.

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