Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 20, 2025
Evans; and the result has been the revelation of a palace, similar in many respects to the House of Minos at Knossos, though on a somewhat smaller scale, and characterized, like the Labyrinth, by distinct periods of building.
Thus in slow decay, after the great catastrophe, passed away the great civilization of the Minoan Empire. Not all of the tribes which had owned the dominion of the House of Minos were content, however, to remain as subjects to the mainland conquerors. The destruction of the central power at Knossos must have involved, as Dr.
The oracle of Apollo, which often laudably reconciled the quarrels of princes, terminated the contest by enjoining the Athenians to appease the just indignation of Minos. They despatched, therefore, ambassadors to Crete, and consented, in token of submission, to send every ninth year a tribute of seven virgins and seven young men.
And yet no doubt it is sometimes the best thing for a city to be conquered, when the conqueror is clement and generous. Minos certainly has right on his side. I think we shall be conquered; and if that must be the end of it, why should not love unbar the gates to him, instead of leaving it to be done by war? Better spare delay and slaughter if we can. And O if any one should wound or kill Minos!
Now follows a variety of contradictory accounts, the most probable and least poetical of which are given by Plutarch; but as he concludes them all by the remark that none are of certainty, it is a needless task to repeat them: it suffices to relate, that either with or without the consent of Minos, Theseus departed from Crete, in company with Ariadne, and that by one means or the other he thenceforth freed the Athenians from the payment of the accustomed tribute.
From adversity to adversity, from country to country, we were finally driven to seclusion in the Isle of Candia, part of the quondam Minos territory. Venice had allowed Candia to fall before Mahomet's bloody sword. Europe lost her bulwark, the Cross of the Saviour was thrown down, and the Candian Christians have been massacred or forced to flee.
How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs, so many fancied gods, groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates, who persecuted the name of the Lord, liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many sage philosophers blushing in red-hot flames with their deluded scholars; so many celebrated poets trembling before the tribunal, not of Minos, but of Christ; so many tragedians, more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings; so many dancers." * But the humanity of the reader will permit me to draw a veil over the rest of this infernal description, which the zealous African pursues in a long variety of affected and unfeeling witticisms.
For the Cretan King he wrought many wonderful works, rearing for him the Labyrinth, and the Choros, or dancing-ground, which, as Homer tells us, he 'wrought in broad Knossos for fair-haired Ariadne. But for his share in the great crime of Pasiphae Minos hated him, and shut him up in the Labyrinth which he himself had made.
I forget where I have read the story of some member of the Convention being very angry because the library contained no copy of the laws which Minos gave to the Cretans. III. xiii. III. xv. He actually recommended the Poles to pay all public functionaries in kind, and to have the public works executed on the system of corvée. Gouvernement de Pologne, ch. xi. Cont. Soc., III. ii. II. i. II. ii.
Common meals seem also to have been an ancient regulation, and to have been established in Crete during the reign of Minos, and in a still more remote period in Italy; for those who are the best judges in that country say that one Italus being king of AEnotria., from whom the people, changing their names, were called Italians instead of AEnotrians, and that part of Europe was called Italy which is bounded by the Scylletic Gulf on the one side and the Lametic on the other, the distance between which is about half a day's journey.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking