Cressida

“ The bitterness in “Troilus and Cressida,” they say rightly, is more intense; and as Shakespeare's disappointment with men and things appears to have increased from “Hamlet” to “Timon,” or from 1602 to 1607-8, they put the bitterer play later. Cogent as is this reasoning, I cannot believe that Shakespeare could have painted Cressida after having painted Cleopatra. The same model has evidently served for both women; but while Cleopatra is perhaps the most superb portrait of a courtesan in all literature, Cressida is a crude and harsh sketch such as a Dumas or a Pinero might have conceived. ”

“ That's Deiphobus. 'Tis Troilus. There's a
man, niece. Hem! Brave Troilus, the prince of chivalry!
CRESSIDA. Peace, for shame, peace!
PANDARUS. Mark him; note him. O brave Troilus! Look well upon him,
niece; look you how his sword is bloodied, and his helm more
hack'd than Hector's; and how he looks, and how he goes! O
admirable youth! he never saw three and twenty. Go thy way,
Troilus, go thy way. Had I a sister were a grace or a daughter a
goddess, he should take his choice. O admirable man! Paris? Paris
is dirt to him; and, I warrant, Helen, to change, would give an
eye to boot. ”

“ Entreat her fair; and, by my soul, fair Greek, If e'er thou stand at mercy of my sword, Name Cressid, and thy life shall be as safe As Priam is in Ilion. DIOMEDES. Fair Lady Cressid, So please you, save the thanks this prince expects. The lustre in your eye, heaven in your cheek, Pleads your fair usage; and to Diomed You shall be mistress, and command him wholly. TROILUS. Grecian, thou dost not use me courteously To shame the zeal of my petition to the In praising her. I tell thee, lord of Greece, She is as far high-soaring o'er thy praises As thou unworthy to be call'd her servant. ”

“ Like the conquests of Alexander the Great, the crusades opened up a new world.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CRUSADES When all is said, the crusades remain one of the most remarkable movements in history. They exhibited the nations of western Europe for the first time making a united effort for a common end. The crusaders were not hired soldiers, but volunteers, who, while the religious fervor lasted, gladly abandoned their homes and faced hardship and death in pursuit of a spiritual ideal. They failed to accomplish their purpose, yet humanity is the richer for the memory of their heroism and chivalry. ”

“ Why art thou vainly troubled? These things have not befallen us against the pleasure of the gods. The ruler of Olympus willeth not that Creüsa should bear thee company in thy journey. For thou hast a long journey to take, and many seas to cross, till thou come to the Hesperian shore, where Lydian Tiber flows softly through a good land and a fertile. There shalt thou have great prosperity, and take to thyself a wife of royal race. Weep not then for Creüsa, whom thou lovest, nor think that I shall be carried away to be a bond-slave to some Grecian woman. ”

“ But at last they saw a long steep island, and a blue peak high among the clouds; and they knew it for the peak of Ida, and the famous land of Crete. And they said, ‘We will land in Crete, and see Minos the just king, and all his glory and his wealth; at least he will treat us hospitably, and let us fill our water-casks upon the shore.’
But when they came nearer to the island they saw a wondrous sight upon the cliffs. For on a cape to the westward stood a giant, taller than any mountain pine, who glittered aloft against the sky like a tower of burnished brass. ”

“ If we wrong or abuse others, God will punish us severely later. How beautiful it is to treat humanity lovingly and tenderly at all times. Prince Cresto, with his wife and daughter, met the remainder of his own tribe that escaped from Lytton Springs. The Black King had killed most of Prince Cresto’s men. After experiencing great difficulties we managed to get to Mandavee, then hired a big ship and set out to sea. That night the ship sailed slowly—sailed away from all that was dear to them. They left sunny old India with broken hearts. ”

“ The position of Crete—'a halfway house between three continents, flanked by the great Libyan promontory, and linked by smaller island stepping-stones to the Peloponnese and the mainland of Anatolia'—marks it out as designed by Nature to be a centre of development in the culture of the early Ægean race, and, in point of fact, ancient traditions unanimously pointed to the great island as being the birthplace of Greek civilization. ”

“ For it was not in Crete that Apollo bade thee dwell. There is a land which the Greeks call Hesperia; an ancient land, whose inhabitants are mighty men of valour; a land of vineyards and wheat. There is our proper home, and thence came Dardanus our father. Do thou, therefore, tell these things to the old man Anchises. Seek ye for the land of Hesperia, which men also call Italy; but as for Crete, Jupiter willeth not that ye should dwell there. ”

“ IN the blue waters of the Ægean Sea, midway between Greece and Egypt, lies the fertile land of Crete. Here, long, long ago, when the gods still walked on earth in human form and the sons of men were as children playing in a fair garden, there ruled a king who was the father of three lovely daughters. They lived in a palace in the rich Omphalian plain, beneath the shade of snow-capped Ida, surrounded by smiling gardens and fruitful vineyards, with a glimpse, away to the southward, of the sparkling Mediterranean Sea. ”

“ CRISA, or Crissa, in ancient geography, one of the oldest cities of Greece, situated in Phocis, on one of the spurs of Parnassus. Its name occurs both in the Iliad and in the Homeric Hymns, where it is described as a powerful place, with a rich and fertile territory, reaching to the sea, and including within its limits the sanctuary of Pytho. As the town of Delphi grew up around the shrine, and the seaport of Cirrha arose on the Crisean Gulf, Crisa gradually lost much of its importance. ”

“ But well I wot, a broche of gold and azure, [142]
In which a Rubbie set was like an herte,
Creseide him yaue, and stacke it on his sherte.”
Chaucer’s Workes, fol. 164. ed. 1602. After Cressid becomes acquainted with Diomede, she gives him a brooch, which she had received from Troilus on the day of her departure from Troy. Id. fols. 179, 181. In Henrysoun’s Testament of Creseide (a poem of no mean beauty) , Cressid, stricken with leprosy, bequeathes to Troilus a ring which he had given her. Id. fol. 184.
Page 72. v. 700. That made the male to wryng] So Skelton elsewhere ”

“ Here old Anchises, father of Æneas, rich in the lore of old tradition, says:
Listen, lords of Troy, and learn where your hopes are. Crete lies in the midst of the deep, the island of mighty Jove. There is Mount Ida, and there the cradle of our race. It has a hundred peopled cities, a realm of richest plenty. ”

“ Whichever way we go, we soon find that we have run into a land older than those with which we have been familiar, whose legends greet us even at this distance over miles of tossing waves. Let those who are content to voyage with us through the pages that follow, be content to reserve Corfù for the homeward journey, and to assume that our prow is headed now toward Crete, through a tossing sea such as led the ancients to exclaim, “The Cretan sea is wide!” The shadowy mountains on the left are the lofty southern prongs of the Grecian peninsula. ”

“ The lying propensity of the Cretans is proved from the fact that the verb to Cretize, was used in Greek with the meaning “to speak falsely.” In Hebrew, Crete is called Caphtor (cypress) . It is mentioned in Jer. xlvii. 4. It was the native land of a tribe of Philistines called Caphtorim (Gen. x. 14; Deut. ii. 23; 1 Chron. i. 12) . The fact that the Philistines came partly from Crete is also affirmed in Amos ix. 7. Another branch of the Philistines came from Casloach in Egypt. The Caphtorim emigrated originally from Egypt to Crete, from which island they were probably driven by the Greeks. ”

“ Another enthusiasm succeeded to that of religious enterprises; and the exploits of the heroic times of our history excited much more [230] admiration in our romances and poets, than they created desire in people of the world to imitate them. Then the Epic Muse, whose voice only celebrates distant events, sang the heroes of the holy wars; and the crusades, for the same reason that Tasso became at liberty to adorn the recital of them with all the wealth of his imagination,—the crusades, we say, were no longer anything for Europe but a poetical remembrance. ”

“ What prodigy, in fact, can more astonish the philosopher, than to see Europe, which may be said to have been agitated to its very foundations, move all at once, and like a single man, march in arms towards the East?
The council of Clermont, which was held in the month of November, 1095, had fixed the departure of the Crusaders for the festival of the Assumption of the following year. During the winter nothing was thought of but preparations for the voyage to the Holy Land; every other care, every other labour was suspended in the cities and the plains. ”

“ The recent exploration and excavation of early sites in Crete have entirely revolutionized our knowledge of its remote past, and afforded the most astonishing evidence of the existence of a highly advanced civilization going far back behind the historic period. Early, Middle and Late “Minoan” periods. Great “Minoan” palaces have been brought to light at Cnossus and Phaestus, together with a minor but highly interesting royal abode at Hagia Triada near Phaestus. “Minoan” towns, some of considerable extent, have been discovered at Cnossus itself, at Gournia, Palaikastro, and at Zakro. ”

“ Both in the Iliad and the Odyssey Phæstos is mentioned along with Knossos as one of the chief towns of Crete; and it is at and near Phæstos that the most extensive and important remains of Minoan culture have been discovered, apart from the work at Knossos. The splendid valley of the Messara, on the southern side of the island, is dominated towards its seaward end by three hills, rising in steps one above the other, and on the lowest of the Page 118 three, overlooking the plain, stood the Palace of Phæstos, the second great seat of the Minoan lords of Crete. ”

“ You have long years of exile, a vast expanse of ocean to traverse—and then you will arrive at the land of Hesperia, where Tiber, Lydia's river, rolls his gentle volumes through rich and cultured plains. There you have a smiling future, a kingdom and a royal bride waiting your coming. Dry your tears for Creüsa, your heart's choice though she be. I am not to see the face of Myrmidons or Dolopes in their haughty homes, or to enter the service of some Grecian matron—I, a Dardan princess, daughter by marriage of Venus the immortal. ”

“ The Page 181 process which finally resulted in the island of Crete becoming 'the mixed land,' with a heterogeneous population of Pelasgians, Dorians, Achæans, and other tribes, must have been a gradual one, extending, in all probability, over several centuries. Any large influx of foreign elements was impossible so long as Crete was dominated by a great and warlike central power; but once that power was broken by the catastrophe in which the Palaces of Knossos and Phæstos were overthrown, there was nothing to hinder the gradual drifting in of the wandering tribes of the Ægean and of the North. ”

“ IV—AESCHYLUS AND HIS ATHENS Greece holds such an eminence in history because the Crest-Wave rolled in there when it did. She was tenant of an epochal time; whoever was great then, was to be remembered forever. But the truth is, Greece served the future badly enough.
The sixth and fifth centuries B. C. were an age of transition, in which the world took a definite step downward. There had been present among men a great force to keep the life of the nations sweet: that which we call the Mysteries of Antiquity. ”

“ Knowledge, however, continued to increase and spread, and assisted greatly in polishing the manners of the nations of Europe. One proof that the crusades were not unconnected with these first steps of civilization is, that knowledge and letters first flourished among the peoples enriched by the commerce which the holy wars favoured, as in Italy; and with the peoples who had most communication with the Orientals, as the Spaniards. Two inventions were destined to complete this happy revolution, and mark the commencement and the end of the period of the crusades. ”

“ Everything cried out for the protecting care of Ceres; but the goddess stayed her hand, and in the solitude of the cave mourned unceasingly for Proserpina. Famine spread over the land, but the people, in spite of their dire need of food, burned sacrifices of sheep and oxen on the altars of Ceres, while they importuned her with their prayers. Jupiter heard their cries and besought the goddess to take the earth again under her wise care; but Ceres refused to listen, for she was indifferent now to the welfare of men, and no longer delighted in the ripening harvest. ”

“ I saw her several times afterwards, and she contributed much to make my stay in Crete interesting and instructive, being always ready to give any information I wanted regarding the country and its inhabitants, and being better fitted for it than anybody else.
Mdlle. Elizabeth of Crete, for that is the name [61] by which she is generally known, is a very remarkable woman. She was born in Crete, but received her education in Athens, and lives in an Eastern Island with the manners and habits of the West. She walks and travels about alone, protected only by the respect all have for her. ”