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It is related that Androgeus, a son of Minos, the celebrated King of Crete, and by his valour worthy of such a sire, had been murdered in Attica; some suppose by the jealousies of Aegeus, who appears to have had a singular distrust of all distinguished strangers. Minos retaliated by a war which wasted Attica, and was assisted in its ravages by the pestilence and the famine.
Preternatural voices are an Homeric tradition: Stentor "spoke loud as fifty other men"; when Achilles roared at the Trojans, their whole army was frightened. In Crete such voices are said to be still common: shepherds carry on conversations at incredible distances speak to, and are answered by, men not yet in sight.
Whether these were genuine Minoans or not, it is impossible to tell; their immediate connection was apparently with Dor, on the coast of Palestine; but their name suggests the town of Zakro, in Eastern Crete, and it is not unlikely that they belonged to the same race as the Zakkaru of the time of Ramses III.
He knew that in this age it is more difficult to check the devouring monster of commercial covetousness than it ever was to stay the Bull of Crete; and that for a poor and friendless community to oppose a strong and wealthy band of speculators is indeed for the wooden lance to shiver to atoms on the brazen shield. He left his writing table and extinguished his lamp.
But it appears now that long before this time the island of Crete was a great naval and commercial power, that in the earliest dynasties of Egypt Cretan fleets were carrying on a commerce with the Nile valley. Indeed, the Cretans may have taught the Egyptians something of the art of building sea-going ships for trade and war.
He was kindly entertained everywhere, and especially at Sparta; and here it was that Venus fulfilled her promise, by helping him to steal away Helen, the fairest of women, while her husband Menelaus was gone to Crete.
A very careful study of these many relics has done away with some of the romantic features of the story. The makers of these early works of art and the builders of these strong fortresses were no sorcerers, but simple sailors and traders. They had lived in Crete, and on the many small islands of the AEgean Sea.
The story of the recent Cretan crisis, as told in the A. B. C. Monthly Report, is not without humour. Till the 25th October Crete, as all our planet knows, was the sole surviving European repository of "autonomous institutions," "local self-government," and the rest of the archaic lumber devised in the past for the confusion of human affairs.
If the figure that guarded Crete was made of brass, then the monarch, who ruled over it, might be thought to have a still harder metal in his breast, and might have been called a man of iron. He bent his shaggy brows upon the poor Athenian victims.
Your heart and mine will beat together with one feeling at the sublime choral strain. We will sing the 'Hymn of Victory. We will go together over the songs of St. Cosmas, St. Theophanes, and St. Theodore; St. Gregory, St. Anatobus, and St. Andrew of Crete shall inspire us; and the thoughts that have kindled the hearts of martyrs at the stake shall exalt our souls to heaven.
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