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But the resurrection of a prehistoric and almost forgotten civilization from the buried cities of Crete has brought to light many evidences of frequent intercourse, two or three thousand years before the Christian era, between European and Egyptian, or Asiatic, centres of life.
The estimate in Hogarth's last sentence, which was published in 1899, before Evans's great discoveries in Crete, was one that must have seemed extravagant to those who, while familiar with the great antiquity of Mesopotamian and Egyptian culture, had been accustomed to think of Greek civilization as having its beginning not so very long before the First Olympiad.
To begin, then: they who are called theologists say that there are three Jupiters; the first and second of whom were born in Arcadia; one of whom was the son of Æther, and father of Proserpine and Bacchus; the other the son of Coelus, and father of Minerva, who is called the Goddess and inventress of war; the third one born of Saturn in the isle of Crete, where his sepulchre is shown.
There having observed the forms of government, and conversed with the most illustrious personages, he was struck with admiration of some of their laws, and resolved at his return to make use of them in Sparta. Some others he rejected. Among the friends he gained in Crete was Thales, with whom he had interest enough to persuade him to go and settle at Sparta.
But they coaxed. And somehow, the old home had changed already. The air of brisk cheerfulness was gone. Aunt Crete had her face tied up most of the time, or a little shawl over her head. Retty was undeniably careless. Barton Finch played cards with the hired man. Uncle Faid had some queer ideas about farming. "I'd like wonderful well to have the boys stay," he said. "They're worth their keep.
A timber roof, simple as that of a country barn, and of which only the horizontal beams catch the eye, connects an entirely plain outside wall with an interior one, pierced by round-headed openings; in which are inserted pieces of complex tracery, as foreign in conception to the rest of the work as if the Pisan armata had gone up the Rhine instead of to Crete, pillaged South Germany, and cut these pieces of tracery out of the windows of some church in an advanced stage of fantastic design at Nuremberg or Frankfort.
Only when that great sea had become a French lake could he hope to plant himself firmly in Albania, Thessaly, Greece, Crete, Egypt, and Syria. For the present, then, the Czar was beguiled with the prospect of an eastern expedition; and, while Russian troops were overrunning Finland, Napoleon sought to conquer Sicily and reduce Spain to the rank of a feudatory State.
From Crete he sailed to Asia, with design, as is said, to examine the difference betwixt the manners and rules of life of the Cretans, which were very sober and temperate, and those of the Ionians, a people of sumptuous and delicate habits, and so to form a judgment; just as physicians do by comparing healthy and diseased bodies.
In Crete the last period of Middle Minoan had been succeeded by the first of Late Minoan, in which the great palace of the Middle period was being gradually transformed into a still larger and more magnificent structure, which was not to be completed until the succeeding period.
Extending our view, we find that Crete, too, may be laid under contribution: Europa's bull, Pasiphae's, the Labyrinth, Ariadne, Phaedra, Androgeos; Daedalus and Icarus; Glaucus, and the prophecy of Polyides; and Talos, the island's brazen sentinel.
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