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Nastes led the Carians, men with a strange language,
The Carians (Greek Καρες Kares, or Καρικοι Karikoi) were the eponymous inhabitants of Caria. According to tradition, the Carians were named after Car, one of their legendary early kings (Herodotus, 1.171). Classical Greeks would often claim that Caria was originally colonized by Ionian Greeks, but it seems rather that the Carians were settled in the region before the Greeks. Homer records that Miletus (later an Ionian city) was a Carian city at the time of the Trojan War (Iliad, 2.865), and Herodotus (1.171) recorded that Carians believed themselves to be aborigenes of Caria. Modern lingustics suggests that the Carian language was an Anatolian language, a linguistic branch that includes Lycian and Lydian. If the Carians were in fact late colonists from the Cyclades as some ancient Greek sources claimed, their language would presumably have been closer to Greek (as the language of the Phrygians was). A group of mercenaries called Carians are named in inscriptions found in ancient Egypt and Nubia, dated to the reigns of Psammetichus I and II. The Carians are clearly mentioned at 2 Kings 11:4 and possibly at Samuel 8:18, 15:18, and 20:23. Homer records that the Carians joined the Trojans against the Achaeans (Iliad, 2.865). The Carians were often linked to the Leleges, but the exact nature of the relationship between Carians and Leleges remains mysterious. The two groups seem to have been distinct, but later intermingled with each other. Strabo (7.321; 13.611) wrote that they were so intermingled that they were often confounded with each other. However, Athenaeus (6.271) stated that the Leleges stood in relation to the Carians as the Helots stood to the Lacedaemonians. This confusion of the two peoples is found also in Herodotus (1.171), who wrote that the Carians, when they were allegedly living amid the Cyclades, were known as Leleges.
See also
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