Odyssey, 17.175-177, places the Pelasgians in Crete, together with two apparently indigenous and two immigrant peoples (Achaeans and Dorians), but gives no indication to which class the Pelasgians belong. It looks therefore as if "Pelasgian" was used in Homeric epic connotatively, to mean either "formerly occupied by Pelasgians" or simply "of immemorial age." But neither passage mentions actual Pelasgians Hellenes and Achaeans specifically people the Thessalian Argos, and Dodona hosts Perrhaebians and Aenianes (Iliad, 2.750) who are nowhere described as Pelasgian. Two other passages (Iliad, 2.681-684 16.233-235) apply the epithet "Pelasgic" to a district called Argos about Mount Othrys in southern Thessaly, and to the temple of Zeus at Dodona, in Epirus. 230) has no Pelasgians, but a Minyan dynasty. The Odyssey, 17.175-177, places the Pelasgians in Crete, together with two apparently indigenous and two immigrant peoples (Achaeans and Dorians), but gives no indication to which class the Pelasgians belong. Iliad, 10.428-429, describes their camping ground between the town of Troy and the sea. He records their chiefs as Hippothous and Pylaeus, sons of Lethus son of Teutamus. Homer calls their town or district "Larissa" and characterises it as fertile, and its inhabitants as celebrated for their spearsmanship. on the Hellespontine border of Thrace (2.840-843). In the section known to scholars as the The Catalogue of Ships, which otherwise preserves a strict geographical order, they stand between the Hellespontine cities and the Thracians of south-east Europe, i.e. It first occurs in the poems of Homer: the Pelasgians in the Iliad appear among the allies of Troy. The ethnonym Pelasgoí (Pelasgians) is of unknown etymology. Scholars have since come to use the term "Pelasgian", somewhat indiscriminately, to indicate all the autochthonous inhabitants of the Aegean lands before the arrival of the Greeks a number of other recent theories as to their nature are also discussed below. There is also a theory suggesting that the Philistines or Peleset of the ancient Levant were connected with the Pelasgians. Among the nations for whom Pelasgian descent has been claimed are Albanians, and Romanians. Whether the Pelasgian language was pre-Indo-European or not, and the extent to which it was a single language or not, are modern disputes that are colored by contemporary nationalist issues. However, it is agreed that Pelasgians had spoken a "barbaric" (non-Greek) language. The ancient Greek references to the Pelasgians are confusing. Pelasgós) to refer to groups of people who preceded the Hellenes and still dwelt in several locations in mainland Greece, Crete, and other regions of the Aegean, as neighbors of the Hellenes, into the 5th century. Ancient Greek writers used the name Pelasgians (Greek: Pelasgoí, s.